This book is an edited volume of case studies exploring the knowledge-engagement efforts on water governance in the Mekong region. It is the fourth volume in the M-POWER book series.
Publisher: SIRD, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (June 2013)
Download book flyer Governing Mekong Flyer_with TOC.
Democratizing Water Governance in the Mekong Region. 2007. Lebel, L., Dore, J., Daniel, R., Koma, Y.S. (Eds.) Silkworm Books/Mekong Press, Chiang Mai. 284 pages. http://www.mekongpress.com/catalog/detail.php?isbn=9789749511251.
Over the last few decades, the Mekong region has been facing complex pressures and challenges in water governance driven by a range of economic integration efforts and relationships motivated by national self-interest.
This book, the first in a four-volume series, brings together the work of researchers, scholars, activists, and leaders in the Mekong region to provide a baseline, state-of-knowledge review of the contemporary politics and discourses of water use, sharing, and management, and their implications for local livelihoods.
The chapters critically analyze contested discourses on such topics as regional hydropower development, floods, and irrigation, along with the broader yet interrelated issues of gender, media, dialogue, and impact assessment. The writers explore the interplay of power relationships between actors such as state planners, regional institutions, the private sector, and various water users, in particular, politically marginalized groups including women, urban and rural poor, and ethnic peoples. The diverse array of topics and perspectives provides a sound basis for engaging in policy-related action.
The book will appeal to a broad readership and, at the same time, contribute to the Mekong region’s search for democratic water governance options.
Sustainable Production Consumption Systems: Knowledge, Engagement and Practice. 2010. Lebel, L., Lorek, S., Daniel, R. (Eds.) Springer Verlag, New York, 278 pages. http://www.springer.com/environment/book/978-90-481-3089-4?detailsPage=toc.
The pursuit of sustainability in particular places and sectors often founders at the edges. Efforts to tackle environmental problems in one place shift them somewhere else or are overwhelmed by external changes in drivers. Gains in energy efficiency of appliances used in houses are offset by greater total numbers or compensating changes in patterns of use. Analytical perspectives and practical initiatives which treat production and consumption jointly are needed to compliment experiences and efforts with sector-, place-, product- and consumer-oriented approaches.
There is now a growing body of scholarship exploring a diverse range of initiatives and experiments aimed at enabling sustainable production-consumption systems. From this body of work flow useful insights for others who would engage, for example, in re-designing relationships around and with technologies and resources in view as in product service systems or markets for the poor.
A systems view of production-consumption systems currently has some limitations related to complexity. For instance most analysts and practitioners struggle to cope with issues of both scale and network linkages simultaneously. Interdisciplinary challenges also increase when the two-way interactions between social institutions and human behavior are related to material flows and transformations. Research- and experienced-based knowledge plays a critical role in many initiatives, but it is rarely separable from issues of power.
This book brings together a set of designed case studies intended to provide a more in-depth understanding of challenges and opportunities in bringing knowledge and actions closer together for the sustainable management of specific production and consumption systems. The case study approach often enabled researchers to engage directly with some of the actors involved in the production, consumption or regulation of specific goods or services and other stakeholders impacted by those processes. Such engagement was particularly worthwhile when it helped mobilize actors to pursue linking knowledge with action in ways that improve the prospects for sustainability.
Critical States: Environmental Challenges to Development in Monsoon Southeast Asia. 2009. Lebel, L., Snidvongs, A., Chen, C.-T.A., Daniel, R. (Eds.) Gerakbudaya, Kuala Lumpur. 473 pages. http://www.gerakbudaya.com/products-page/asian-studies/critical-states-environmental-challenges-to-development-in-monsoon-southeast-asia/
The peoples of Southeast Asia share a common need for action: a proactive engagement with and forward-looking response to the multi-level environmental and social changes which are redefining vulnerabilities and opportunities in development.
Extraordinarily rapid economic development has radically transformed urban-industrial, agrarian and marine environments throughout Southeast Asia. Future development is now being constrained by the consequences of decades of largely unregulated exploitation of the region’s rich natural resources and biodiversity. It has also increased or altered the vulnerabilities of Southeast Asian populations to both climatic variability and global economic shifts.
Critical States provides transboundary “state-of-the-science” reviews, case studies, and assessments of issues in the environmental change-development nexus, including: governance and institutional challenges, urbanization, climate change, poverty, and land-energy-water use.
After the Logging Ban: Politics of Forest Management in Thailand. 2005. Daniel, R. (Ed.) Foundation for Ecological Recovery (PER), Bangkok. 220 pages. http://www.terraper.org/publications.php (price 350 baht).
The book reviews the state of forests and forest policies in Thailand and shows why the nationwide ban on logging concessions declared in 1989 seems to have had little or no effect in halting forest degradation.
The book reveals how Thailand’s often corrupt forestry industry is exploiting forest resources not just in the country but across its borders such as in Burma and Cambodia, while other efforts to cash in on forest areas such as establishing large-scale tree plantations are bringing their own set of ecological problems and social conflicts.
In examining the critical problems with the forest conservation ideology of the Thai state, the book unveils how conservation areas such as national parks are placing more restrictions on access to forest resources by local communities as well as discouraging local forest conservation efforts. Meanwhile, important legal initiatives for increased local control over forests including the “People’s Community Forest Bill” are struggling to materialize.
The book points to new ways to build social spaces towards strengthening community-based resource management and reverse the present trends of forest destruction in Thailand.
Sustainable Production Consumption Systems: Knowledge, Engagement and Practice
Edited By Lebel Louis, Sylvia Lorek, Rajesh Daniel
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Subject: Earth and Environmental Science, Sustainable Development and Social Sciences, general
It has my chapter: Agrofuels in Thailand: Policies, Practices and Prospects (co-authored with Louis Lebel and Shabbir H. Gheewala)
Book overview
Sustainable Production Consumption Systems brings together a set of designed case studies intended to provide a more in-depth understanding of challenges and opportunities in bringing knowledge and actions closer together for the sustainable management of specific production and consumption systems. The case study approach enabled researchers to engage directly with some of the actors involved in the production, consumption or regulation of specific goods or services and other stakeholders affected by those processes. Such engagement was particularly worthwhile when it helped mobilize actors to pursue linking knowledge with action in ways that improve the prospects for sustainability.
Copes can be ordered from: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p1p8qh122r720573/
When examining the processes of disempowerment and marginalisation of communities and their resources, we find that at the centre of these processes lie the control and curtailment of knowledge production in particular by state institutions or corporate entities. This book uses case studies from the Mekong region to explore how, in numerous ways, indigenous or informal knowledge systems are produced and conserved and used to support their struggle over the contestation of social spaces and common property systems.
A journey in words ... 