'No nation can escape its geography', warned Percy Spender, Australia's Minister for External Affairs, in 1950. With the immediate turmoil of World War II over, communism and decolonisation had ended any possibility that Asia could continue to be ignored by Australia. In the early 1950s, Australia embarked on its most ambitious attempt to engage with Asia: the Colombo Plan. This book examines the public and private agendas behind Australia's foreign aid diplomacy and reveals the strategic, political and cultural aims that drove the Colombo Plan. It examines the legacy of WWII, how foreign aid was seen as crucial to achieving regional security, how the plan was sold to Australian and Asian audiences, and the changing nature of Australia's relationship with Britain and the United States. Above all this is the question of how Australia sought to project itself into the region, and how Asia was introduced into the Australian consciousness. In answering these questions, this book tells the story of how an insular society, deeply scarred by the turbulence of war, chose to face its regional future.
In this global era, Central Asia must be understood in both geo-economic and geopolitical terms. The region's natural resources compel the attention of rivalrous great powers and ambitious internal factions. The local regimes are caught between the need for international collaborations to valorize these riches and the need to maintain control over them in the interest of state sovereignty. Russia and China dominate the horizon, with other global players close behind; meanwhile, neighboring countries are fractious and unstable with real potential for contagion. This pathbreaking introduction to Central Asia in contemporary international economic and political context answers the needs of both academic and professional audiences and is suitable for course adoption.
The rapid trend of globalization has brought with it a variety of sustainability challenges, including global climate change, biodiversity loss, poverty, and social inequalities, which are problems with unclear boundaries, complicated interrelated components, undefined parameters, contradictory values, and no single solution. Social work has a long-standing tradition of emphasizing the interaction of people and their environment. For this reason, the field of social work is one of the best-placed academic disciplines for studying the impact of environmental change on social systems, and should play an important role in developing strategies for mitigating and adapting to these environmental challenges. However, traditional social work tends to lack sustaining work and neglect globally interconnected social problems. Combining case studies and country reports from around Asia with a theoretical framework for understanding sustainability concerns, this book aims to show how social work can play a valuable role in mitigating and adapting to environmental challenges and social sustainability. For social work to develop a meaningful and viable profession that addresses contemporary sustainability issues, it requires changes and transformation in paradigm, theories, strategies, social policy and social services that will facilitate a sustainable future for all mankind.
Tourism in Southeast Asia provides an up-to-date exploration of the state of tourism development and associated issues in one of the world's most dynamic tourism destinations. The volume takes a close look at many of the challenges facing Southeast Asian tourism at a critical stage of transition and transformation and following a recent series of crises and disasters. Building on and advancing the path-breaking Tourism in South-East Asia, produced by the same editors in 1993, it adopts a multidisciplinary approach and includes contributions from some of the leading researchers on tourism in Southeast Asia, presenting a number of fresh perspectives.
This work focuses on the challenges facing the newly independent states of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kirgizia and Tadjikistan. It examines the political events and socio-economic changes which followed the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
Facing Asia examines the political and economic processes of regionalism and regionalization in Asia with a focus on Japan and Japanese actors. The articles by eminent scholars address the forces that tie the region together. They treat topics ranging from Japanese bilateral and multilateral ODA and the activities of state and non-state actors on the regional level to issues such as Japanese multinational corporations, foreign direct investment in Asia, and regional financial institutions. Methodologically, the authors draw on disciplinary strengths in either the social sciences or economics while organizing their treatment around a shared political-economic perspective. By looking at Asia through an interdisciplinary lens, the volume offers something to anyone interested in Japanese involvement in the politics and economics of the region. In the final chapter, the editors weave together the different approaches to Japan's place in Asian regional cooperation in the 1990s and beyond.
The book provides an up-to-date account of mangrove forests from Asia, together with restoration techniques, and the management requirements of these ecosystems to ensure their sustainability and conservation. All aspects of mangroves and their conservation are critically re-examined. The book is divided into three sections presenting the distribution and status of mangrove ecosystems in Asia, the challenges they are facing, their issues and opportunities, and the management strategies for their conservation.
This book documents experimentation with various policy and governance approaches that produce structural differences in the composition and organisation of Asia’s higher education systems. In view of the wide variation in the public and private provision of higher education, it showcases how issues of access, equity and modes of participation are addressed, how institutional and programme quality are managed and how academic labour is treated and developed. The book both maps these differences and analyses the country-level dynamics, policy approaches and the problems faced by a variety of states in Asia in the race to develop competitive higher education systems. Focusing on the intersection of governance and higher education policy, it addresses the challenges facing higher education in Asia and the national responses of governments in terms of the organisation of the sector.
Non-Traditional Security in Asia examines the critical security challenges faced by states and societies in Asia including health, food, water, natural disasters, internal conflict, forced migration, energy, transnational crime, and cyber security. Through the development of a comprehensive analytical framework that establishes the key ingredients to policy evaluation, the editors draw on a wide variety of experts to collaborate in investigating these crucial issues. This inclusive framework ensures that all voices are heard including those oftentimes under-represented and marginalized in society to ensure that academic and policy debates are well informed about the often complex and nuanced nature of these non-traditional security challenges. Through an investigation into these specific non-traditional security threats, Non-Traditional Security in Asia documents and evaluates many of the most pressing challenges faced by Asia today. The authors analyse the ways in which particular issues are addressed by the many stakeholders involved in the policy-making process, both within governments and across societies. The question of how these challenges are addressed across and between the different levels of global governance highlights the strengths and weakness that are directly attributable to policy successes and failures. It is through this layered and comprehensive approach, together with an evaluation of the role of stakeholders, which binds together the chapter contributions to this collection. The book undertakes an issue-specific chapter study of how Asian states and societies address these non-traditional security concerns from environmental adaptation and mitigation measures to conflict resolution. For each issue area, it identifies and explains the concerns of various policy communities, identifying the motivations behind some of the key decisions made to affect change or stabilize the status quo. Essentially it questions not only what a security issue is but also for whom the issue is important and the interaction this has with policy outcomes. With a focus on regional and global institutions as well as national and local ones, this collection illustrates the variety of stakeholders involved in non-traditional security concerns, and reflects on their relative importance in the decision-making process. Through a systematic evaluation of these non-traditional security issues by employing a comprehensive analytical framework, critical appreciation of the dynamics of the policy-making process surrounding issues of crucial national, regional and international significance in Asia are made. As a result of sharing these insights, the contributors provide the tools as well as a selection of issue-specific stakeholders to illuminate the key but complex characteristics of non-traditional security in Asia.
This volume brings together a range of contributions that provide contemporary regional science perspectives on population change and its socio-economic consequences in the Asia-Pacific region. This region accounts for close to two-thirds of the world’s population and is highly diverse in terms of key demographic indicators such as population size, growth, composition and distribution. The authors provide quantitative assessments, either descriptively or by means of modelling, of important demographic issues affecting this part of the world. The topics addressed include: broad demographic trends across the Asia-Pacific region and its sub-regions; assessment of population decline, urbanization and spatial distribution using cases from China, Colombia, Japan and Australia; migration and economic impacts in Australasia, Chile and Timor Leste; and the impacts of declining or low fertility and population ageing in China, India, Thailand, and across Asia. Given its scope, the book will appeal to all readers seeking to understand population change and impacts across the Asia-Pacific region, with a specific focus on sub-regional differences and dynamics.
