The Greater Mekong Subregion Cross-Border Transport Facilitation Agreement (GMS CBTA) Instruments and Drafting History is a compendium of agreements, instruments of accessions, and memoranda of understanding forged between the GMS countries and compiles in one publication all the documents that form the CBTA instrument. It reflects previous policy dialogues, including outcomes of negotiations between various government agencies from the GMS countries since the inception of the CBTA. This publication aims to strengthen stakeholders' understanding of the technical aspects of the CBTA as well as to draw attention to the crucial issues on transport and trade facilitation.
The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) includes Cambodia, the People's Republic of China (specifically Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam. In 1992, with assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and building on their shared histories and cultures, the six countries launched a program of subregional economic cooperation---the GMS Program. Over the past 20 years, the GMS Program has achieved substantial success in improving regional connectivity through investments of $15 billion as well as more than 180 technical assistance projects. With support of ADB and other development partners, the program is helping the participating countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals and balanced growth through increased connectivity, improved competitiveness, and a greater sense of community.
The economic corridor approach was adopted by the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries in 1998 to help accelerate subregional development. The development of economic corridors links production, trade, and infrastructure within a specific geographic area. The review of these corridors was conducted to take into account the opening up of Myanmar and ensure that there is a close match between corridor routes and trade flows; GMS capitals and major urban centers are connected to each other; and the corridors are linked with maritime gateways. The review came up with recommendations for possible extension and/or realignment of the corridors, and adoption of a classification system for corridor development. The GMS Ministers endorsed the recommendations of the study at the 21st GMS Ministerial Conference in Thailand in 2016.
Urban populations are projected to increase from 54% to 66% of the global population by 2050, with close to 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa. Cities and towns---a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions---will need to address challenges posed by climate change. A nature-based approach in identifying climate change vulnerabilities and developing relevant adaptation options was conducted in three towns of the Greater Mekong Subregion. Working with local governments, nongovernment organizations, women's groups, and professional associations, town-wide adaptation measures were defined by overlaying climate change projections on town plans and zoning schemes for strategic infrastructure. This publication captures valuable experience and lessons from the project.
Towards Malaria Elimination - A Leap Forward was started to mark the occasion for renewed commitment to end malaria transmission for good (the WHO's call for "Malaria Free World" by 2030). This book is dedicated for the benefit of researchers, scientists, program and policy managers, students and anyone interested in malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases with the goal of sharing recent information on success stories, innovative control approaches and challenges in different regions of the world. Some main issues that emerged included multidrug-resistant malaria and pandemic risk, vaccines, cross-border malaria, asymptomatic parasite reservoir, the threat of Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium knowlesi, insecticide resistance in Anopheles vectors and outdoor malaria transmission. This book is one little step forward to bring together in 17 chapters the experiences of malaria-expert researchers from five continents to present updated information on disease epidemiology and control at the national/regional level, highlighting the constraints, challenges, accomplishments and prospects of malaria elimination.
This open access book traces the development of landscapes along the 414-kilometer China-Laos Railway, one of the first infrastructure projects implemented under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and which is due for completion at the end of 2021. Written from the perspective of landscape architecture and intended for planners and related professionals engaged in the development and conservation of these landscapes, this book provides history, planning pedagogy and interdisciplinary framing for working alongside the often-opaque planning, design and implementation processes of large-scale infrastructure. It complicates simplistic notions of development and urbanization frequently reproduced in the Laos-China frontier region. Many of the projects and sites investigated in this book are recent "firsts" in Laos: Laos's first wildlife sanctuary for trafficked endangered species, its first botanical garden and its first planting plan for a community forest. Most often the agents and accomplices of neoliberal development, the planning and design professions, including landscape architecture, have little dialogue with either the mainstream natural sciences or critical social sciences that form the discourse of projects in Laos and comparable contexts. Covering diverse conceptions and issues of development, including cultural and scientific knowledge exchanges between Laos and China, nature tourism, connectivity and new town planning, this book also features nine planning proposals for Laos generated through this research initiative since the railway's groundbreaking in 2016. Each proposal promotes a wider "landscape approach" to development and deploys landscape architecture's spatial and ecological acumen to synthesize critical development studies with the planner's capacity, if not naive predilection, to intervene on the ground. Ultimately, this book advocates the cautious engagement of the professionally oriented built-environment disciplines, such as regional planning, civil engineering and landscape architecture, with the landscapes of development institutions and environmental NGOs.
The water resources of the Mekong river catchment area, from China, through Thailand, Cambodia and Laos to Vietnam, are increasingly contested. Governments, companies and banks are driving new investment in roads, dams, diversions, irrigation schemes, navigation facilities, power plants and other emblems of conventional "development." Their plans and interventions pose multiple burdens and risks to the livelihoods of millions of people dependent on wetlands, floodplains, fisheries and aquatic resources.
Since the 1990s, regional organizations of the United Nations and international financial institutions have adopted a new dynamic of transnational integration, within the framework of the regionalization process of globalization. In place of the growth triangles of the 1970s, a strategy based on transnational economic corridors has changed the scale of regionalization.
This publication is a historical summary of progress made in energy cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) since the beginning of the economic cooperation program in 1992. It highlights a two-pronged and phased approach to develop the GMS power market to realize the full benefits of synchronous operations---the policy and institutional framework to promote power trade and the physical interconnection to facilitate cross-border power transfers. This publication aims to help stakeholders understand GMS members' efforts in power cooperation and to draw attention to crucial issues on regional power trade.
The Mekong is the most controversial river in Southeast Asia, and increasingly the focus of international attention. It flows through 6 counties, China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Viet Nam. The 4 downstream countries have formed the Mekong River Commission to promote sustainable development of the river and many of their people depend on it for their subsistence ? it has possible the largest freshwater fishery in the world, and the Mekong waters support rice agriculture in the delta in Viet Nam (which produces about 40% of that country's food) as well as in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. China is now building the first large mainstream dam on the river, and has proposals for several more. These dams are likely to affect the downstream countries. Several of the downstream countries also have plans for large scale hydropower and irrigation development which could also impact the river. This book will provide a solid overview of the biophysical environment of the Mekong together with a discussion of the possible impacts, biophysical, economic and social, of some possible development scenarios. It is intended to provide a technical basis which can inform the growing political and conservation debate about the future of the Mekong River, and those who depend on it. It is aimed at river ecologists, geographers, environmentalists and development specialists both in the basin and (especially) outside for whom access to this material is most difficult. This book will be the first comprehensive treatment of the Mekong system. - The first comprehensive overview of all aspects of the Mekong River system - Deals with a regionally critical ecosystem and one under threat - The Mekong supports the world's largest freshwater fishery and provides water underpinning a major regional rice paddy system - Presents the authoritative findings of the Mekong River Commission's research for a wider audience for the first time outside of limited distribution reports
