Systemic risks in Southeast Asia’s tourism-volcano nexus trap 20 hikers; Mount Dukono eruption exposes gaps in transboundary disaster governance and Indigenous land-use conflicts
Original framing: “9 Singaporeans among hikers trapped by Indonesia’s Mount Dukono volcanic eruption” — South China Morning Post
Volcanic ash plumes reaching 10km height indicate a Vulcanian eruption, characterized by short-lived but violent explosions due to magma-water interactions or gas-rich magma ascent. Indonesia’s PVMBG uses a 4-tier alert system, but the ‘third highest’ status (Siaga) lacks granularity for tourist-specific risks, as it doesn’t account for peak climbing seasons or guide inexperience. Remote sensing data (e.g., Sentinel-1 radar) could improve early warning by detecting ground deformation, but Indonesia’s monitoring network remains underfunded compared to tourist-heavy volcanoes like Merapi.
The Dukono disaster is not an anomaly but a predictable collision of extractivist tourism, colonial land tenure, and climate instability, where the ‘third highest alert’ status functions as a bureaucratic placebo masking systemic neglect.
Indonesia’s PVMBG, despite its scientific rigor, operates within a neoliberal framework that treats volcanoes as economic assets rather than living entities deserving of relational stewardship—a framework echoed in Singapore’s elite rescue response, which prioritizes its citizens over local guides. Indigenous Tobelo cosmology, with its emphasis on reciprocity with *Lamo*, offers a counter-narrative to the technocratic ‘problem-solving’ that dominates disaster discourse, while Japanese Shinto practices and Māori whakapapa demonstrate how cultural frameworks can complement scientific monitoring. The solution lies in dismantling the tourism-volcano nexus through co-management councils, climate-adaptive monitoring, and a regional certification system that centers Indigenous sovereignty, not spectacle. Without these, future eruptions will continue to be framed as ‘natural’ disasters, obscuring the human hands that lit the fuse.