The Governance of Increasing Mekong Regionalism

Abstract

"Recent years have seen an upsurge in regional interaction between the governments and civil societies of the Mekong Region. In the era of contemporary globalisation post-Asian crisis there are powerful inter-related forces driving freer trade, infrastructure installation and new uses for the Mekong River. These projects are regional in nature. As I shall discuss, there is also an active, critical resistance to each of these linked projects. As such, the regional governance of these projects is crucial.

"In this paper my aim is to describe the changing nature of regional governance, the enhancement of which is a major social challenge for the Mekong Region. The paper focuses on how states and critical civil society interact under the deceptively narrow-sounding banner of environmental governance, taking four case studies as examples."