Perspectives
by Lia Sciortino
Perspectives
China’s PR Problem Rears Its Head
Johanna Son
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CHIANG MAI, Dec 11 (TerraViva/IPS Asia-Pacific) - Powerful neighbour. A rising power. Old friend. Big, secretive investor. Big boy of the region.
These were some of the terms participants at a talk-show format discussion at the Mekong Media Forum used when asked to share the images of China they get from the media.
Reading Media
Johanna Son
BANGKOK -- Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. What images might these words conjure up in the minds of international consumers of news? Perhaps war, maybe the Khmer Rouge. Or they might say, ‘Oh, it’s that those countries that had that war some time ago. . . they’re near one another, and they’re all the same’.
China: Benign Bully of the Mekong?
Johanna Son
SYDNEY, Oct 3 (IPS Asia-Pacific) – Over the last decade or so, China’s deft use of soft power has seen South-east Asian neighbours’ view of it change from a looming threat to a largely friendly, if still imposing, giant to the north.
MEKONG REGION: UNEP Faults AsDB Plans
BANGKOK, Jul 17 (IPS) - A sharp difference of opinion between the
Asian Development Bank (AsDB) and the United Nations Environment
programme (UNEP) has surfaced over a flagship venture of the Manila-
based financial institution -- its high-profile development programme
for the Mekong region.
UNEP has dispensed with diplomatic-speak to expose in clear terms the
shortfalls and damage to the environment arising from 'development' in
the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), an AsDB programme that the bank
says is designed to link and develop its countries by encouraging
economic integration.
Although it has become one of the fastest growing regions in the
world, ''much of the growth has bypassed more than 70 percent of its
rural population, many of whom are directly dependent on natural
resources for livelihoods and incomes,'' reveals the 'Greater Mekong
Environmental Outlook 2007', just released by UNEP's Asia-Pacific
regional office in Bangkok.
''Economic growth, coupled with growing population pressures, has also
led to widespread pollution, land degradation and depletion of natural
resources,'' adds the report, a groundbreaking study that examines the
vital links that ecosystems and natural resources have in supporting
livelihoods and poverty reduction. ''Unless addressed, these changes
may cause irreversible ecosystem damage with far-reaching implications
for economic activities that depend on natural resources.''
Attempts by the AsDB to address the environmental costs appear to have
left authors of the report cold. They say that ''the GMS still lacks a
strong, credible body with the mandate to develop and coordinate its
responses to environmental challenges. Establishing such a body is a
key priority.''
Part of the problem is rooted in the manner in which the GMS
initiative operates. ''The GMS programme was created only for economic
cooperation, and it is being pushed by the bank,'' Uwaree In-na,
environmental affairs officer at UNEP's Bangkok office, told IPS.
''There is no local ownership and there is no real association for the
countries to cooperate. It lacks a regional institution to deal with
the environment.''
But the AsDB official tasked with environment brief disagrees with the
UNEP view. ''We function within the GMS economic programme. Within
this framework, the environmental issues are addressed,'' says Javed
Hussain Mir, the chief natural resources management specialist at the
GMS Environmental Operations Centre. ''We are now looking at how the
transportation sector's investment is being developed and its impact
on the environment.''
The centre he works for, in fact, was set up in 2005 to ''address the
environmental concerns of the GMS,'' Mir explained during an
interview. ''We think that the informal framework under the GMS is
working well.''
The GMS has in its fold five countries -- Burma, Cambodia, Laos,
Vietnam and Thailand -- and China's southern provinces of Yunnan and
Guangxi. All areas with the exception of Guangxi share the 4,800 km-
long Mekong River that flows through southern China and empties out in
southern Vietnam.
It was created in 1992 to increase development, trade and cooperation
within this sub-region. The AsDB and other investors saw countries
like Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam ripe for opportunity as they came out
after decades of bloodshed during the United States' war in Indo-
China. The tone for this transformation to build a new economic area
had been set in the late 1980s by then Thai prime minister Gen.
Chatichai Choonhavan. He called for ''battlefields to be turned into
marketplaces.''
Plans to build a regional power grid, billed at 4.5 billion U.S.
dollars, was one scheme the AsDB pushed. Through it, countries in the
Mekong region were to benefit from cheap and extensive supply of
energy from hydropower schemes. Laos, for instance, will feed power-
hungry Thailand.
The East-West Economic Corridor (EWEC) is another initiative of the
bank under its GMS programme. This will see a network of highways due
for completion by 2008, linking parts of Burma, Cambodia, Laos and
Thailand to facilitate more overland and cross-border trade. Part of
the 1,500 km-long roadway will connect Vietnam's central seaport city
of Danang to Moulmein, in Burma's Mon state which faces the Andaman
Sea.
But environmentalists and grassroots activists have been consistently
troubled by these cross-border schemes. When the GMS marked its 10th
anniversary, in 2002, Bangkok-based green groups expressed concern
about the impact the over 60 million people who depend on the Mekong
for food, water and transport will feel when the GMS's integrated
power grid is complete. Plans were drawn to build 32 dams to harness
the waters of South-east Asia's largest river for this electricity
generation project.
And as the GMS marks 15 years, the tone among civil society groups has
hardly changed. ''The Mekong power grid was developed by the AsDB only
based on economic criteria. Environmental sustainability was a
secondary issue,'' says Carl Middleton, Southeast Asia campaign
consultant for the International Rivers Network (IRN), a global green
lobby. ''It has gone ahead with the GMS projects despite massive
cumulative environmental and social cost.''
What the GMS programme has failed to grasp are the ecosystems and
natural resources that are part of the Mekong River countries,
Middleton noted during an interview. ''The Mekong River is an
integrated system, where development in one area of the Mekong basin
can have unintended consequences in other areas.'' (IPSAP07)
Mekong's Avian Flu
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What's New
Mekong ICT Camp 2010
The Mekong ICT Camp (http://mekongict.org), a biannual training workshop on information, communication, and technologies for citizen media, community health, and civil society practitioners in Mekong subregion, is accepting applications until Mar. 31, 2010. Participants are welcome from the Mekong countries, including Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.
COMING SOON: 'TALKING GENDER IN THE MEKONG MEDIA'
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BANGKOK - Do media organisations in the Mekong Region think that gender sensitivity, including giving voices to women, is part of doing better stories? How do they define it within the context of their societies and how do they report on different genders and sexuality? Do they include the use of gender-friendly language in their stylebooks and training programmes? How much is using a gender lens a news habit?
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