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\"Presents a contemporary analysis of the impact of China's rise on the Mekong Region at a critical period of Southeast Asian history. As the most populated country and the second largest economy in the world, China has become an increasingly influential player in global and regional affairs. Economic ties between China and her southern neighbors are particularly strong. Yet relations between China and the Mekong region are complex and embedded in other socio-cultural and political issues. China's accelerated growth, increasing economic footprint, global search for energy, natural resources, and food security, and the rapid pace of its military modernization have created a wide range of new challenges for smaller countries in Southeast Asia. These new challenges both encourage and limit cooperation between China and the emerging ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). This book pays close attention to some of these challenges with particular focus on the impact of Chinese investment, trade, foreign aid, and migration\"-- Provided by publisher.

There is a considerable gap between the science of conservation biology and the design and execution of biodiversity conservation projects in the field. Science is often failing to inform the practice of conservation, which remains largely experience-based. The main reason is the poor accessibility of evidence on the effectiveness of different interventions. This is the basis for this book adopting an 'evidence-based approach', modelled on the systematic reviews used in health sciences and now being applied to many policy arenas. Evidence-based Conservation brings together a series of case studies, written by field practitioners, that provides the evidence-base for evaluating how effective conservation and poverty alleviation strategies can be better implemented. A series of systematic reviews uses experiences and data from fifteen integrated conservation and development projects conducted in the Lower Mekong region, specifically in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They provide wide-ranging overviews of the effectiveness of protected areas and how innovative tools and methods for monitoring and evaluation can be utilised for more effective outcomes. Results are in the form of management and policy recommendations, based on the quality of evidence and the cost-utility of the intervention. By bridging the gap between field practice and conservation, the analysis should lead to more effective integrated conservation and development interventions. The book represents one of the first attempts to apply the evidence-based approach to conservation and development.

This book is one of the first ethnographies written on the life of farmers in rural Southern Vietnam since the economic reform in the 1980s. It investigates how social, economic and political factors affect the farmers' life in the Mekong Delta in the late socialist era with a particularly focus on the family, which serves as the basic and most significant social unit for the farmers. Dealing with classical anthropological topics of kinship and family, the book examines them as dynamic institutions. With vivid illustrations of the village life, family farming, education of children, jobs outside of farming and everyday politics, it presents new and different pictures of the current Vietnamese family under rapid social changes. The book will contribute to the current ethnographical research in Vietnam and Southeast Asia and also be of particular interest to those working on society and culture in the geographical region from broader disciplines. It will also appeal to readers who are interested in such topics as late socialism, social transformation, and rural development.

Many fields have identified an increasing need to use global satellite precipitation products for hydrological applications, especially in ungauged basins. In this study, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of three Satellite-based Precipitation Products (SPPs): Integrated Multi–satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) Final run V6, Soil Moisture to Rain (SM2RAIN)-Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) V1.5, and Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) V2.2 for a subbasin of the Mekong River Basin (MRB). The study area of the Srepok River basin (SRB) represents the Central Highland sub-climatic zone in Vietnam under the impacts of newly built reservoirs during 2001–2018. In this study, our evaluation was performed using the Rainfall Assessment Framework (RAF) with two separated parts: (1) an intercomparison of rainfall characteristics between rain gauges and SPPs; and (2) a hydrological comparison of simulated streamflow driven by SPPs and rain gauges. Several key findings are: (1) IMERGF-V6 shows the highest performance compared to other SPP products, followed by SM2RAIN-ASCAT V1.5 and MSWEP V2.2 over assessments in the RAF framework; (2) MSWEP V2.2 shows discrepancies during the dry and wet seasons, exhibiting very low correlation compared to rain gauges when the precipitation intensity is greater than 15 mm/day; (3) SM2RAIN–ASCAT V1.5 is ranked as the second best SPP, after IMERGF-V6, and shows good streamflow simulation, but overestimates the wet seasonal rainfall and underestimates the dry seasonal rainfall, especially when the precipitation intensity is greater than 20 mm/day, suggesting the need for a recalibration and validation of its algorithm; (4) SM2RAIN-ASCAT had the lowest bias score during the dry season, indicating the product’s usefulness for trend analysis and drought detection; and (5) RAF shows good performance to evaluate the performance of SPPs under the impacts of reservoirs, indicating a good framework for use in other similar studies. The results of this study are the first to reveal the performance of MSWEP V2.2 and SM2RAIN-ASCAT V1.5. Additionally, this study proposes a new rainfall assessment framework for a Vietnam basin which could support future studies when selecting suitable products for input into hydrological model simulations in similar regions.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have increasingly emerged as a valuable mechanism for drawing in investment and expertise from the private sector to meet public infrastructure needs. PPPs involving transboundary international waters require particular attention given their huge potential for social and environmental impact. 'Transboundary Waters, Infrastructure Development and Public Private Partnership' examines what PPPs are and how they function in the context of transboundary waters. It explains how environmental and social \"safeguards? operate in relation to PPPs and transboundary waters in light of the Nam Theun 2 and the Xayaburi Hydroelectric Power projects in Laos PDR. Finally, it draws important lessons from their contractual arrangements, costs, financing and risk mitigation that are relevant to PPPs in other transboundary waters matters.

Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1-UItZqsk Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/user/UWashingtonPress#p/u/2/gp1-UItZqsk

Recent extremely heavy precipitation has led to substantial economic losses and affected millions of residences in the Lancang‐Mekong River Basin (LMRB). This study analyzed the spatial‐temporal characteristics of the annual maximum precipitation (R1X) of the LMRB and identified the moisture sources and pathways conducive to R1Xs using a Lagrangian back trajectory model. Results show that India Ocean and Bay of Bengal (IO/BOB), local evapotranspiration, and West Pacific Ocean and East China (WP/EC) are the three main moisture transport pathways of the R1Xs in LMRB, contributing 68.3%, 20.4% and 11.3% of the trajectories, respectively. R1Xs in the downstream eastern area are affected by tropical cyclones bringing large amounts of moisture from the WP/EC. As tropical cyclones shifted northward under climate change impact, more extreme precipitation occurred over the LMRB due to moisture coming from WP/EC, but those from the IO/BOB had decreased because of the slowdown of flows across the Equator. Plain Language Summary Recent extremely heavy precipitation has led to more frequent floods, storm surges, and other natural hazards in the Lancang‐Mekong River Basin, resulting in substantial economic losses and affecting millions of residences. This study used annual maximum precipitation to represent the extreme precipitation and analyzed its spatial‐temporal characteristics and the moisture sources and pathways. Results show that the extreme precipitation of the upstream region mainly occurred in July, while that of the downstream region mainly occurred in August‐September. The moisture pathways of the historical extreme precipitation were identified using a physical‐based model, and are classified into three clusters using a machine‐learning model. West Pacific Ocean and East China, local evapotranspiration, and Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal (IO/BOB) are the three moisture transport pathways with contributions of 68.3%, 20.4%, and 11.3% to the total pathways. The tropical cyclones bring large amounts of moisture and mainly affect R1Xs in the downstream eastern area. Tropical cyclones shifted northward under climate change impact, and more extreme precipitation occurred over the LMRB due to moisture coming from the West Pacific Ocean and East China, but those from the IO and BOB had decreased because of the slowdown of flows across the Equator. Key Points The timing of the annual maximum precipitation of the Lancang‐Mekong River Basin (LMRB) varies from July to September The extreme precipitation of the LMRB mainly received moisture from the Indian Ocean to the West Pacific Ocean Tropical cyclones will bring more extreme precipitation to the LMRB under climate change