Putting the Tropics on the Academic Map: The Raison d’Être of the SEIGOP Conference

The Tropics is the region located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Apart from its distinctive climate, tropical regions share many other characteristics, including exotic but vulnerable bio-diversity and natural ecosystems such as rain forests and coral reefs. More than 20 years before publication of this edited volume, Sachs et al. (2001) defined three factors that contribute to the economic successes enjoyed across the Tropics. These include, coastal proximity, prevalence (or rather: absence) of infectious diseases, and agricultural productivity. Accordingly, northern Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the southern part of Taiwan could be considered as the only successful, high-income and socio-economically advanced places in the Tropics. Notwithstanding these three factors, the Tropics have witnessed tremendous transitions which, in turn, have triggered varied levels of socio-economic development in the region. These changes call for a renewed focus into the socio-economic potential of the Tropics. The proceedings of the SEIGOP Conference are an endeavor to provide a collection of research and practice papers that shed some nuanced insights into the contemporary socio-economic state of the Tropics.