Economic Transition and Natural Resource Management in East and Southeast Asia

Economic and institutional reforms in East and Southeast Asia have caused impressive economic growth and improved the livelihood of millions of people. In several regions, however, this growth has been obtained at the expense of land quality or to the detriment of other natural resources. As a consequence, the sustainability of future growth is threatened. Efforts aimed at promoting sustainable resource use in rural East and Southeast Asia are being and will be confronted with and influenced by two major changes. First, the continuous transition towards a market-oriented economy implies that massive, centralized state regulation will decrease and that economic, decentralized and informal resource management institutions are likely to increase in importance. Second, domestic economic liberalization, international trade liberalization and globalization will greatly affect domestic agricultural prices and, hence, the use of natural resources. This volume contains a selection of papers that were presented at the Asia-Link RECREATE seminar at the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in June 2007 and the international Asia-Link RECREATE conference at Nanjing Agriculture University, China, in October 2008. The seminar, the conference and the publication of this book are part of Asia-Link's "Restructuring Higher Education in Resource and Environmental Economics" project activities, which have been funded by the European Union under its Asia-Link programme. The selected papers provide an overview, albeit not a complete one, regarding the environmental and natural resource problems Southeast Asian countries are facing from an economic perspective. The papers are written in such a way so that they can serve as supporting case study material for classes in environmental and natural resource economics at the graduate level. The editors also expect that environmental and natural resource economists with an interest in Southeast Asia will find the various chapters of interest as well as stimulating for their own research