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This paper investigates the adaptation processes with reference to the narrative analysis of human–environment interactions in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. From the political ecology perspective, it focuses on the discourses of the power relationships embedded within the 'state‐society‐flood' nexus over the course of its 'opening‐up and closing‐off' processes (e.g. excavating large‐scale canals for human settlements and agricultural expansion (opening‐up) and human interventions into natural systems through water control structures (closing‐off)). Drawing on empirical data gathered from 33 interviews and nine focus group discussions in three study areas and relevant literature, the paper argues that human interactions with the flood environments are intertwined with adjustments of adaptation patterns as evidenced through three periods: free adaptation (pre‐1975), transitional adaptation (1976–2010) and forced adaptation (after 2010). These processes have witnessed a gradual power shift in the 'state‐society' relations in manipulating floods, which moves from the top‐down towards a more collaborative fashion. By unravelling the political ecology of the 'state‐society‐flood' nexus, this paper exhibits the skewed development in the delta, which is largely bound to short‐term development planning to prioritise local socio‐economic and political objectives. The paper contributes important policy implications for achieving socially just and environmentally sustainable development in the delta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A diversity of place‐based community economic practices that enact ethical interdependence has long enabled livelihoods in Monsoon Asia. Managed either democratically or coercively, these culturally inflected practices have survived the rise of a cash economy, albeit in modified form, sometimes being co‐opted to state projects. In the modern development imaginary, these practices have been positioned as ‘traditional’, ‘rural’ and largely superseded. But if we read against the grain of modernisation, a largely hidden geography of community economic practices emerges. This paper introduces the project of documenting keywords of place‐based community economies in Monsoon Asia. It extends Raymond William’s cultural analysis of keywords into a non‐western context and situates this discursive approach within a material semiotic framing. The paper has been collaboratively written with co‐researchers across Southeast Asia and represents an experimental mode of scholarship that aims to advance a post‐development agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of international development targets agreed to by members of the United Nations in 2000. The goals aim to improve many of the dimensions of extreme poverty and are to be achieved by 2015. This paper provides an overview of the issues relevant to the achievement of the MDGs in the Asia-Pacific region. The paper begins by discussing the critiques of the MDGs before assessing whether countries in the region are on track to achieve them. Issues relating to data availability and accuracy are discussed and the need to tailor the MDG targets to the special circumstances of some Asia-Pacific countries is examined. The paper proceeds by discussing the role of international assistance via international foreign development aid and non-governmental organisations in the achievement of the MDGs. The paper concludes with some policy implications for the international donor community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a leading threat to sustainable socio‐economic development in Bangladesh. Adverse impacts of climatic disasters including flash floods, recurrent cyclones and erratic rainfall patterns are already causing hardship for both rural and urban people and are expected to accelerate into the future. The aim of this research note is to identify the core contributing economic sectors to climate change in Bangladesh, and to consider effective mitigation strategies. Following the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (2014), in this paper, we argue that comprehensive mitigation measures are required in the energy, transport, buildings, industry and land‐use sectors to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Our findings indicate that it is crucial that government and non‐government mitigation efforts engage with community knowledge practices in order to most effectively reduce GHG emissions and combat the adverse impacts of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach ( SLA) is promoted as a useful way to centre development on the needs of those who are most vulnerable, but is critiqued for inflexibility and ignoring important power relations. In light of the rigidities in using a formulaic SLA, this conceptual paper suggests a practical suite of tools that are in use in livelihoods research and development practice, and refocuses them to include adaptive strategies of vulnerable peoples to resource management pressures. The Pentagon Prison of five capitals can overwhelm both the researcher and researched and while possibly useful in identifying livelihoods gaps, misses all-encompassing power relations, and reduces complexities to quantitative units. In arguing for a shift from the Pentagon Prison of SLA towards a flexible livelihoods trajectory approach, in particular for a research project on livelihood adaptations in Lao PDR, I identify a feasible research and development approach that more meaningfully reflects the lives of those participating in that research. I propose that the livelihood trajectories approach opens up the way data are gathered and can lead to holistic understandings of the complex realities of peoples' adaptive strategies, incorporating strategies from short to long term, and proactive, reactive and inactive techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Philippines, calls for creating 'global', 'sustainable' and 'resilient' cities are placing urban poor communities in increasingly precarious positions. These communities have long been the targets of urban development and 'modernisation' efforts; more recently the erasure of informal settlements from Philippine cities is being bolstered at the behest of climate change adaptation and disaster risk management (DRM) agendas. In Metro Cebu, flood management has been at the heart of DRM and broader urban development discussions, and is serving as justification for the demolition and displacement of informal settler communities in areas classed as 'danger zones'. Using Kusno's (2010) interpretation of the 'exemplary centre' as a point of departure, this paper interrogates the relationship between DRM, worlding aspirations (Roy and Ong, 2011) and market‐oriented urbanisation in Cebu, and considers the socio‐spatial implications of these intersecting processes for urban poor communities. Through analysing the contradictions inherent in framings of certain bodies and spaces as being 'of risk' or 'at risk' over others, I argue that the epistemologies of modernity, disaster risk and resilience endorsed and propagated by the state are facilitating processes of displacement and dispossession that serve elite commercial interests under the auspices of disaster resilience and pro‐poor development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power has long been recognised as crucial to the sustainability of community development interventions; however, the way in which space affects power relations within such interventions has remained relatively under-theorised in the development literature. Many practitioners continue to regard power as located centrally and as embedded in particular institutions, networks, knowledge and resources. According to this logic, processes of empowerment involve the redistribution of these resources to marginalised groups through their participation in development interventions such as microfinance and sustainable livelihood initiatives. The danger inherent in such development approaches is that they can discourage the potential for participants to use their own agency by overemphasising an existing lack of resources locally and inadvertently feeding a sense of dependency on formal development interventions initiated by external agencies. This paper suggests that a post-structural conceptualisation of power as dynamic, multiple and mediated at the local level offers a more productive starting point for thinking about approaches to empowerment. Drawing on data from an action research project designed to initiate community enterprises in a small rural municipality in the Philippines, I suggest how a post-structural approach to power can be enacted by building on the existing local resources and practices of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the work of NGOs broadens and becomes more complex, concerns about their capacity and sustainability will loom much larger and have more significant implications for development processes. The main issue addressed in this paper is how NGOs and donors variously view the relationship between capacity building and financial and organisational sustainability. To this end we firstly explore varying definitions of capacity building, highlighting distinctly Pacific perspectives of the concept and subsequently look at emerging practices used by Pacific NGOs to create sustainable organisations. The role of donor organisations in Pacific NGO capacity building is critiqued. We conclude that despite considerable rhetoric about the need for donors to adopt more coordinated approaches to capacity building, there is limited evidence to suggest that donors are prepared to act together to set up, for example, joint capacity building funds. Donors must accept that the long–term processes of development and the roles played by Non–Governmental and Community Based Organisations require a rethinking of the standard funding cycle and the focus on ‘exit strategies’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s represented a decade of immense changes in environmental management in New Zealand. This paper outlines the challenges of implementing the widespread reforms started in the 1980s. In terms of the environment, reforms came in the form of a large volume of new legislation and a new system of decentralised planning and management. This paper discusses these changes in the context of a shift toward a new environmental paradigm. Key issues and initiatives of the 1990s are discussed which address sustainability, integration, environmental leadership, and public involvement. Specific strategies are outlined in reference to biodiversity, which has been identified as New Zealand's most pervasive environmental issue. Ongoing challenges for the future include how to better involve stakeholders to incorporate alternative values in decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the turn of the century, food safety has been one of the most significant social issues in Taiwan. In face of a series of alarming food-poisoning scares, which pushed many Taiwanese to search for good safe food, the Taiwanese authorities have initiated a variety of strategies to handle food production issues. At county level, government sponsored projects, such as rural regeneration projects, have coincided with a wave of return migration, in which young city dwellers have returned to rural towns in order to engage in sustainable food production. There is also a popularising trend of 'mini-tours', a leisurely activity that sees urban tourists visiting rural regions in search of 'authentic' traditions, such as those around food. This confluence of food safety concerns, official rural regeneration schemes, civil movements for sustainable food production, local tourism and emerging discourses on authentic food and food localism has fashioned an interesting food scene in Taiwan. This paper will examine the impacts of these joint forces. It will also illustrate how local food producers have struggled to construct a new food producer-consumer relationship that also contributes to the sustainable development of Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a broad survey of existing literature on contemporary solid waste management (SWM) in the Pacific region to underscore an urgent and compelling need for improved SWM. Despite advances in waste management systems and funding for technical support and capacity building from a range of sources, waste continues to threaten public and ecological health and the economy in Pacific Islands Countries and Territories (PICTs). SWM in the Pacific requires innovative thinking in a challenging environment of remoteness, limited available land, fragile ecosystems, vulnerability to natural hazards and subsequent climate sensitivity. Many PICTs are under considerable pressure to open their markets up to trade liberalisation. Increasing links to the global economy through trade liberalisation could either further exacerbate waste management challenges in the Pacific or contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development goals. The authors argue that if the PICTs' urgent waste management challenges are to be meaningfully addressed, the region's leaders must ensure trading partners conform to local environmental protection policies and that trade agreements align with sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policies designed for sustainable development are becoming ever more complex and ambiguous. Assessments should thus incorporate development representations and values, rather than only relying on economic and financial normative indicators. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that acknowledges the plurality of the various stakeholders' viewpoints. We suggest that evaluation of grassroots development policies could provide an innovative and more integrative way to measure development by broadening the scope to encompass both livelihood and welfare dimensions. Based on the assessment of a development scheme in New Caledonia, we argue that this cognitive and shared approach could be used to obtain a contextualised measurement of development. Two conditions further strengthen this approach: combining the use of different types of measurement tools, and adopting a rigorous quantitative measurement approach, in line with the collective representations. This promising approach may be applied to gain insight into the ability of implemented policies to address local development choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spectacular growth of Chinese cities since the 1980s is often theorised as reflecting the advantages of latecomer development (ALD). ALD has been more effective in cosmopolitan, globally accessible coastal cities than outer cities. As leading cities, like Shanghai, close the development gap, the potential for 'easy' ALD growth falls off rapidly. Because institution building is more difficult than firm-based growth, ALD strategies may generate rapid short-term economic growth but not sustainable development. Accordingly, Chongqing municipality, with a population of 33 million, in West China, is pursuing a beyond latecomer advantage model. This is characterised by: (i) reducing poverty and rural-urban disparity through accelerated urbanisation, rural-urban integration and emphasising human resource development; (ii) upgrading the value added of Chongqing's economy through targeting of FDI and incentives to local start-ups; (iii) endogenous development, reducing risks from external shocks; (iv) Hukou reform; (v) establishing a land use conversion certificate market to rationalise land use; (vi) emphasis on morality to address crime/corruption; (vii) recognition of the importance of amenity in attracting investment and talent; and (viii) establishing a longer developmental time perspective. This paper explores this Chongqing model in detail. 摘要 中国自20世纪80年代以来所取得的辉煌经济增长，在很大程度上是基于其引进外资和利用后发优势来实现的。而后发优势的推进，在国际化大都市和那些拥有全球通达性的沿海城市会更为有效。作为先锋性城市，如上海等，随着与全球城市发展的差距日益缩小，'易于'实现后发优势的潜力就会迅速消失，这是因为制度建设要比以企业为基础的经济增长更难推进，因此后发优势或许能带来快速的短期经济增长，但并不能带来当然的可持续发展。有鉴于此，重庆市，这座拥有3300万人口的中国西部城市，正在寻找一条'超越后发优势'的发展道路。这一模式目前正在成长中，表现出如下特征：（1）通过加快城市化进程、城乡融合发展和强调人力资本开发，减少贫困和城乡差别；（2）通过引进外资和刺激本地企业创业，提升重庆市的经济附加值；（3）通过内生性发展，减少外部动荡所引起的风险；（4）通过农村集体土地资产的创新性盘活，有效地进行户籍改革；（5）通过建立土地市场的流转证制度，优化城乡土地的利用效率；（6）通过强调道德建设和反腐倡廉以及强有力的打击犯罪，提升全体市民的向心力和士气；（7）通过强调环境质量在吸引投资和人才方面的重要作用，加快外向型和宜居型城市的发展步伐；（8）通过建立公务员服务质量评价体系，倡导长期发展观，以推进经济社会发展的持续平衡性。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increase of global integration, the peri-urban area (PUA) of megacities in Asia has become a favourite destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper uses the PUA of Shanghai as a case study to investigate the impact of global forces on the urban expansion of the city, and the link between urban growth and sustainable development in this mega-urban context. Shanghai has grown impressively during the past two decades in terms of economic and physical transformation. Much of this transformation has rested on the unbridled exploitation of land and other environmental resources in its peri-urban area. This is characterised by the designation of development zones and the concentration of manufacturing FDI, resulting in dispersed growth and environmental degradation. The disruption of the physical environment, combined with the concentration of the urban poor in these areas (in particular ‘temporary migrants’), has turned the PUA into a potential crisis point threatening the social and economic development of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of Kiribati is a small, highly infertile Pacific Island nation and is one of the most challenging locations to attempt to support dense urban populations. Kiribati, like other nations in the Pacific, faces an urban future where food insecurity, unemployment, waste management and malnutrition will become increasing issues. Homegardening is suggested as one way to address many of these problems. However, the most recent study on agriculture production in urban centres in Kiribati shows that, in general, intensive cultivation of homegardens is not a common practice. This disparity between theory and practice creates an opportunity to re-examine homegardening in Kiribati and, more broadly, in the Pacific. This paper examines the practice of homegardening in urban centres in Kiribati and explores reasons why change has or has not occurred through interviews with homegardeners and government/donor representatives. Results show that homegardening has increased significantly in the past five years, largely because of the promotion of homegardens and organic composting systems by donor organisations. While findings further endorse homegardening as an excellent theoretical solution to many of the problems that confront urban settlements in Kiribati and the Pacific, it raises additional questions regarding the continuation of homegarden schemes beyond donor support programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Pacific region faces a significant and growing burden of noncommunicable diseases and mental disorders. An emerging issue is the increasing overlap between physical and mental health conditions, which are often the result of interactive effects and lead to more severe consequences. In addition, climate change is amplifying health risks, as it poses both physical and existential threats to Pacific Island communities. The sustainable development agenda provides a holistic opportunity to address these issues; key elements include improving health surveillance and strengthening health systems, within a multisectoral approach, in order to work towards achieving Healthy Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, sustainable development goal 2 (SDG2) specifically seeks to 'End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture'. However, there is no clear prescription for how this goal should be achieved which allows various donors adopting diverse strategies to all claim they are contributing to SDG2. This article examines whether policies of five donors on food security and agriculture in the Pacific Islands region are likely to help to achieve SDG2. Fundamentally, the current and future wellbeing of many Pacific Island peoples, many of whom live on small, geographically dispersed islands with limited market access, is strongly tied to their abilities to produce food for themselves. This is somewhat overlooked by bilateral donors from Australia and New Zealand who invest relatively small amounts in the agriculture sector of Pacific countries and show little interest in supporting people's food security through local sourcing and production for subsistence. From an SDG2 perspective of ending hunger for all people, it is positive to see that, by contrast, two multilaterals have shown commitment to a more balanced and holistic approach to food production in the Pacific Islands region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pacific Island countries are particularly vulnerable to future manifestations of climate change due to high coastline‐to‐land‐area ratios, and high dependence of inhabitants on natural ecosystems. While everyone in the Pacific Islands should participate in climate change adaptation activities, it is the young people, given they are the generation likely to not only bear the burden of climate change, but to lead and live effective climate change adaptation activities and strategies specific to their region, the involvement of youth is critical. Pacific Island youths are often marginalised within traditional decision‐making hierarchies, therefore they are typically excluded from participating in meaningful discussions at community and government levels. Discussions were held with 30 adolescents aged 14–18 years in Fiji to explore knowledge and experiences regarding climate change. Participants revealed their dismay at their inability to talk to family – who they consider are not doing enough – about what they consider as appropriate responses to climate change, recommending the help of an authoritative outsider who could speak to their community leaders and family. Discussions also revealed that Fijian youth could not distinguish between changes in the climate and normal weather events, attesting to the importance of climate‐change education and awareness‐raising efforts within the Pacific Islands more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]