Transborder Governance of Forests, Rivers and Seas

Description

Natural resources often stretch across borders that separate modern nation states. This can create conflict and limit opportunities for regulated consumption of their goods and services, but also provide opportunities for joint multinational efforts that exceed single country capabilities. This book illustrates the diversity of transborder natural resources, the pressures that they experience or the opportunities that exist for multinational regulatory regimes, monitoring and enforcement. It presents ten case studies of transborder natural resources that are of interest to two or more neighboring countries, and that are subject to, or in need of bilateral or multinational coordinated management. The case studies include the exploitation of specific marine resources in international waters, rivers that travel through several countries and contiguous tropical forests across national borders, and where commodities, nature conservation or even territorial integrity are at stake. They are drawn from across the globe, including flood management in Western Europe, tropical forests in the Western Amazon, hydropower development in the Mekong region of South-east Asia, forest conservation in Central Africa and marine resource and fisheries exploitation in the waters of Japan, South-east Asia and Australia. Together the chapters provide a review of a wide range of transborder natural resource examples, and the diverse regulatory regimes that need to be devised to achieve successful management. An introductory chapter provides a conceptual and theoretical underpinning that can guide future research efforts on similar cases and a concluding chapter draws major conclusions and implications for related concepts and theories.

Wil de Jong is a Professor at the Centre for Integrated Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. Denyse Snelder is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands Noboru Ishikawa is an Associate Professor at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Kyoto University, Japan.

'The present book should be studied by politicians, decision-makers in general and biotechnicians in agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Transborder affairs historically often provoked conflict and war. This should be avoided by harmonizing our notions, and this book shows the way.' Dr. Roelof A.A. Oldeman, emeritus professor of Silviculture & Forest Ecology, Wageningen University, The Netherlands 'Global in scope and multidisciplinary in approach, this volume brings together ten meticulously-analyzed and well-written case studies to examine the complexities of natural resource governance along borders both terrestrial and aquatic. Examples from four continents and several seas show vividly that apparently modern crises often have deep historical roots and seemingly simple disputes are socially and political multi-layered. This book is not only intellectually compelling, but also important in the most practical sense.' Christine Padoch, Matthew Calbraith Perry Curator, Institute of Economic Botany, New York Botanical Garden