The implementation of transportation infrastructures has played a key role in the economic development of Malaysia by supporting the rise of urban and industrial centres. The extraction of natural resources, notably tin and rubber, has encouraged the establishment of roads and railways from the nineteenth century. Production areas, while witnessing an increase of their transport network, are linked to the major international gateways such as Klang, Penang and Singapore (Fau 2003). The States on the west coast of Malaysia — Penang, Perak, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka and Johor — have thus seen an early development rarely known across Southeast Asia (World Bank 1955). Consecutive governments of Malaysia have conducted a development policy focused on the implementation of clusters along a corridor from North, Bukit Kayu Hitam and Padang Besar, to South, Johor Bahru, which is neighbouring Singapore (Fau 2003). The nodes of the corridor, by having a range of multimodal transports based on rail, highways, airports and ports, concentrate flows of investments, goods and labour. The connectivity based on a modern transportation network, does indeed allow the emergence of nodal cities, but also an integration of margins (see Map 12.1).

The first-rank cities of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, cover an international scope but are also facing congestion issues which can to a certain extent slow down their growth. To tackle the congestion matter, the use of storage areas and better interconnection with the hinterland has been implemented. The result of this spatial development is an increased complexity of the national and regional urban network and hierarchy (Goldblum and Franck 2007). This spatial reorganization leads to a redistribution of growth through the region and stimulates a great nodal region. The logistic model of a dry port is therefore used as a main tool which by its hinterland location and its land transportation infrastructures allows a terminal to act as supporting port (Walter and Poist 2003). Although it is not a landlocked country, Malaysia benefits from a dry port to relay its congested coastline (i.e. Naziri Khalid's contribution).

Myanmar's (formerly Burma) strategic geographic location at the tri-junction of South Asia, Southeast Asia and China has been attracting foreign countries as it is a dynamic crossroads linking Southeast Asia, Western China and the Indian subcontinent and serves as an economic gateway to a colossal potential market of more than two billion consumers as well as a primary gateway to energy supplies and trans-shipment. In the context of energy security, Myanmar's emergence as a significant regional exporter of natural gas including its immense hydropower potential has become a pivotal stake to energy-hungry superpowers such as India and particularly the economic powerhouse, China.

Indeed, Myanmar's geostrategic location is of critical significance for China as it is a “land bridge” for the economic development of its south western provinces, a strategic corridor allowing China to secure access to the Indian Ocean, trans-shipment of oil and source of natural gas. Currently, China is building oil and gas pipelines linking Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, to the deep-water port of Kyaukphyu on the Bengal coastline to tap Myanmar's huge gas reserves and to provide an alternative route for its crude oil imports from the Middle East and Africa, reducing shipping time and its dependence on traffic through the Straits of Malacca.

However, Beijing's influence in Myanmar has been challenged since the November 2010 national elections in Myanmar. Following the elections, the junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) was dissolved by the parliament and a new civil government — mainly composed of newly retired generals and military officers — was formed. The elections aimed to institutionalize the junta's political role and gain domestic and international legitimacy, and respectability with its new civil government. The end of the military rule was perceived as a move to attract foreign investment. At first, the handover of power by the junta was greeted with scepticism, since then, the international community has been seeking engagement and adopting a more flexible approach with the new government after the April 2012 by-elections that marked the return of the main opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party into the Myanmar political system.

The temperature in Asia increased at a rate of 0.1–0.3 degrees Celsius per decade from 1951 to 2000, while sea level rose and rainfall increased but with greater variation. Changes in weather resulting from climate change come in various forms: heat waves, droughts, floods and cyclones. These become more often and more intense, and interfere with human activities, including economic activities. Over the period 1990–2100, there could be a decline of up to 50 per cent in rice yield in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand. Agriculture is therefore among the most affected sectors. Agriculture is also a major cause of climate change. For example, the emission of methane (CH4) from rice fields contributes to greenhouse gas. Agriculture therefore should be managed in a way that both mitigates and adapts to climate change. Adaptation is especially important for poor farmers who lack the resources needed to properly deal with the problems of climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND AGRICULTURE

Changes in temperature, rainfall, and CO2 release are all critical to agricultural activities. Pests and diseases are also likely to change and therefore alter food productivity. Geographic changes to land affect their suitability for cultivating staple crops. Other negative effects include the reduction in the quantity of water and the loss of land due to rise in sea level. Climate change will most likely be experienced differently from one area to another. Some areas may benefit from increased temperature, especially those areas that currently have limited potential due to cold weather. Atmospheric CO2 may also speed up growth process of some plants. Rain-fed crops declined in South and Southeast Asia. Crop yields might increase by 20 per cent in East Asia and Southeast Asia. In Thailand, the effects on yields can be either positive or negative, depending on the CO 2 regime. Given the mixed findings, even if global effects were small or moderate, regional effects could be large and devastating — at least for some parts, such as Southeast Asia, which is among the most vulnerable places due to its high forestation and strong dependence on agriculture.

The aim of this chapter is to understand and analyse the effects of the opening of frontiers, the increase in cross-border exchanges and subsequently, the creation of economic corridors among local societies in Northern Laos. Until the last decade, a picture of Northern Laos would have been approximately the following: on the one hand, Tai populations (including the Lao majority) settling in the lowlands, growing rice, and on the other, highlanders practising shifting cultivation, husbandry and poppy growing. Roughly 75 per cent of the Laotian population of 5.5 million practised shifting cultivation. During the last ten years, some significant changes have raised questions concerning this situation. These changes are the result of the combination of several policies:

A first set of changes concerns the border areas and has its origins in regional political and economic transformations induced by the opening of borders. In the northern part of Laos, most border regions have been isolated for a long time since they are located in the outer regions of the country. Since the policy of Economic Corridor Development, these previously isolated regions are now mostly included in the new trade routes and there has been a particular increase in pressure on these peripheral areas. Due to the regional context mentioned elsewhere, the government considers border area trade as an important component of its foreign trade policy. Facing external demands for developing market-based agriculture, the Lao State has promulgated various laws (e.g. land-forest allocations), following the injunctions of the World Bank and the UNDP. These two organizations strongly encourage land allocation in order to develop a land market attractive to investors and to ensure a better use of agricultural land and environmental protection. At the same time, and as the contribution of Danielle Tan will show, the opening of borders has made possible the establishment of several foreign companies (mainly Chinese) which are, for the most part, dedicated to the agricultural sector (growing rubber trees, corn, tea, or buying NTFP). As a result, each province and district is witness to the burgeoning growth of foreign concessions owned by these companies. This rapid growth is also having a snowball effect and is leading to the appearance of Lao citizen-owned concessions — generally smaller in size.

The island of Sumatra is the Indonesian part of the Malacca Straits region, and forms one of its edges. Its location on the route between the China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Java Sea is exceptional, and has played a role in all the main periods of world history up to the time of Indonesian Independence. The building of this far-flung archipelago into a nation was marked by a fear of centrifugal forces; centralization of territorial management from the capital, Jakarta, and control by closing borders provided a solution to this problem. “Introverted” Indonesia developed over a fifty-five-year period, concentrating its investments on the central area, Java (Charras and Franck 2000, 2004), and turning Sumatra into an outlying area on the national scale. A major component of the Straits region due to its size (443,000 km2), its natural resources and the production of its plantations, but also on account of its demographic weight (50 million inhabitants, representing at present 21 per cent of the population and 21 per cent of the surface area of Indonesia, a unique balance in the archipelago), Sumatra today is a long way behind Singapore and the peninsular part of the Malaysian Federation in terms of economic performance.

This study presents the effects of the development policies since 1966, the beginning of the Soeharto regime, which led to this “sidelining”, then examines whether the ten years’ implementation of the regional autonomy law have finally enabled this large island to regain its place in the opening up and renewal of transnational relations on a regional scale. It deals with the central part of East Sumatra, which consists of three provinces — Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra (Sumsel) — facing the Malay peninsula, from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, via Melaka and Johor Bahru. The coastline is bordered by a very wide swamp area and small islets encumbering the straits; it is the part closest to the opposite shore (see Map 9.1). It is also in this central part — rightly considered to be isolated and depressed in the regional study performed by the Japanese cooperation agency (JICA) in the 1980s — that recent development and spatial reshaping have been the greatest.

Specialists in transport geography define a corridor as an area of particular intensity in terms of flow and of spatial, economic, and demographic accumulation, generally supported by transportation infrastructures, on an axis between two poles (Debris and Comtois 2010; Rodrigue et al. 2006). According to this definition, Asia is structured by transnational continental and maritime corridors which are hierarchized according to the intensity of their traffic and trade patterns, be they local, regional, or international (Rimmer 1999). These corridors, whether planned or the result of existing flows, are structured by nodes whose ranks are linked to the ranks of the corridors and whose dynamics are closely tied to international exchanges along its length. These nodes function as logistic and communications hubs or gateways into territories and participate in articulating the space of flows (Castells 1996) and the space of places (Albrechts and Coppens 2003). The head nodes of the corridors are usually large first or second rank metropolises. Between these poles of command, the corridors are structured by a hierarchical series of hubs: by inland province capital cities and by smaller border towns along the continental corridors or, in maritime corridors, by smaller ports.

In the area studied, the strongest corridors, which are commanded by some of the most powerful global cities, are the maritime corridors (Malacca Straits and the corridor that runs along the Asia's Pacific coast). Asia also possesses continental corridors, especially the planned corridors of the GMS, a dense grid of transport corridors that connects southern China to Southeast Asia and the eastern and western coasts of the Indochinese peninsula (see Christian Taillard's article in this volume).

The dominant spatial organization is north-south both at the transnational level as it does in continental Southeast Asia at the national level in terms of spatial constructs. The dominant corridors, whether continental or maritime, are north-south oriented (or north-west-south-east in the case of the Malacca Straits) due to the intensity of the maritime traffic in one of globalization's dominant poles or, for continental corridors, due to the intensity of flows with China.

The term “straits” designates a narrow maritime passage between two land masses that links two seas. Like an isthmus or a canal, it represents not only a strategic axis but also a structural axis in global organization. This unique and complex zone of land-to-sea interface has become a major factor in the twentieth century, as coastal nations have exercised their political will by enlarging their sphere farther and farther out to sea and by nationalizing the seaways. Although the Conference of Montego Bay in 1982 put an end to decades of tensions and even conflicts by establishing rules to regulate this appropriation and to delimit the maritime borders, international straits remain insufficiently defined geographical areas. Often considered solely as a narrowing of the maritime region in which navigating conditions frequently become difficult, straits are rarely considered as separate territories structured by longitudinal as well as latitudinal flow (Picouet and Renard 2002).

The originality of the Straits of Malacca is precisely the fact that it is both a zone of major exchange and transit in international commerce, in which the nations situated along its coasts have always been deeply integrated, and a region in itself, shaped, despite the borders that separate the opposing coasts, by a tight web of commercial and cultural relations between the two coasts (Fau 2003a, p. 34). A multi-level approach is necessary in order to understand the functioning of these straits, which are given structure both by the latitudinal flow, for the most part transoceanic, and by the transversal flow linking the two coasts.

This multiple reality of the Straits of Malacca will be studied in this chapter under the angle of an analysis of the maritime shipping networks and of the different levels of organization in the port systems. In order to understand the articulation of the different maritime flows and their impact on the spatial organization of the coasts, the straits are considered successively as a corridor of intense global maritime circulation, as a natural border between Malaysia and Indonesia, and lastly as an inland sea in which the local shipping flow has been given a new dynamic by the opening of the borders.

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of natural disasters in the world in the past decade (CRED 2009). There has been a tenfold increase in the number of climate-related events such as droughts, storms, and floods since the data were first collected in 1950. In 2009, the Philippines occupied the topmost rank in terms of disaster occurrence with 25 events, followed by China with 24, and the United States with 16 (CRED 2009). Of the 25 events, 14 were classified as meteorological (typhoon), 9 were hydrological (flood and landslide), and 2 were geophysical (volcanic eruption and earthquake). The three strong typhoons in 2009 — Kiko (Morakot), Ondoy (Ketsana), and Pepeng (Parma) — were three of the most devastating in terms of number of victims and extent of damage to property. According to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), there were, on average, 20 storms entering the Philippine Area of Responsibility every year from 1948 to 2004. Given that meteorological events occur frequently in this country, it is necessary to identify risk reduction strategies and coping mechanisms to alleviate the negative effects of a meteorological disaster.

In this chapter, I present a case study of disaster management strategies undertaken by households and local government in response to the storm Milenyo (international code name Xangsane) that hit the Philippines on 28 September 2006. According to CRED, Milenyo was the tenth most destructive disaster in the world in 2006. Evidence in this chapter comes from a dataset drawn from a household survey conducted in a village, East Laguna Village (Hayami and Kikuchi 2000), on February 2007, barely four months after the devastation by Milenyo. This study has four important findings from the experience of East Laguna Village. First, the damages caused by Milenyo varied widely from household to household even within the same village depending on the ownership of paddy fields and tree crops.

In Cambodia, the poor depend largely on natural resources for their livelihoods. This is particularly true for the rural poor. Hence, decline in the quality and accessibility of natural resources due to climate change is likely to affect them more seriously than the non-poor. Specifically, the poor become more vulnerable because they are less able to adapt to environmental change. Despite the fragility of Cambodian politics in the 1990s, the economy grew at a remarkable 7.2 per cent (average). After political stability returned in 1999, the rate rose even higher — to an average of 9.3 per cent for 2000–08. This resulted in an increase in per capita income and a decline in poverty. According to the latest World Bank Poverty Assessment report, the poverty headcount in Cambodia declined from 47 per cent in 1993/94 to 30 per cent in 2007. During the same period, school enrolment, housing, and access to safe drinking water, electricity, and sanitation also improved (MOP 2006; World Bank 2009).

Despite this impressive performance, poverty rate was not uniform across the country. Poverty rates are higher in rural areas than in urban areas in all geographical zones (MOP 2006). Of the country's five geographical zones, Plateau and Mountains is the poorest, with a poverty rate of 52 per cent in 2004, followed by Tonle Sap (42 per cent), Plains (32 per cent), Coastal regions (27 per cent), and Phnom Penh (4.6 per cent). Since the Tonle Sap zone, has so many poor, and contains 30 per cent of Cambodia's population (MOP 2009), it has become of special concern to policy makers and other national and international stakeholders. The Participatory Poverty Assessment of the Tonle Sap region conducted by the Cambodian Development Resource Institute (2007) reveals that the poor there have benefited less from Cambodia's rapid economic growth than the non-poor. The poor of this zone are still heavily dependent on land- and water-based natural resources for their livelihoods.

Planning the development of a city with rivers that flood requires an initial study on how the floods affect the residents. Among the city's residents, the poor are often the most affected. In 2008 the World Bank estimated that the Philippines loses 15 billion pesos (US$333 million) a year to floods, monsoons, and typhoons, which is about 0.7 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP). In September and October 2009, typhoons Ondoy (Ketsana) and Pepeng (Parma) hit Manila and the northern Philippines in quick succession, causing 3.8 billion pesos in damages and 24.8 billion pesos in immediate losses to agriculture, fisheries, and forestry, or about 2.7 per cent of the GDP. They seriously affected 9.3 million people and resulted in a loss of almost 1,000 lives (World Bank 2009). Such figures are impressive, but the harm done to the poor is often underestimated.

Starting in the early morning of 26 September 2009, Ondoy brought 450 mm (18 inches) of rainfall in a span of twelve hours (almost equivalent to the average monthly rainfall of Manila). There was deep flooding and damage all over the metropolis. Many poor communities were under water for several days; some for two or three months. A few days later, Pepeng brought heavy winds and rains, with a cumulative rainfall exceeding 1,000 mm (39 inches) in some areas. The damages brought about by Ondoy and Pepeng needed about US$4.42 billion for rehabilitation and recovery in the ensuing three years. Ondoy and Pepeng made it clear that every household, community, city, and country must have a plan in place for coping with future disasters (World Bank 2009).

In this essay, I describe the socio­economic conditions of the people who live along the major rivers in the flood plains of Metro Manila. The description is based on a survey of 300 urban poor households I conducted between February 2008 and May 2009 in fourteen communities situated by the river side in the Metro Manila flood basin.

INTRODUCTION: MALAYSIA, A MARITIME NATION AT THE HEART OF A VIBRANT ECONOMIC REGION

Malaysia's economy, one of the brightest shining stars in the developing world, has undergone rapid transformation from being a commoditiesbased economy in the 1970s to a manufacturing-driven, export-oriented one today. A major producer of electronics and electrical goods, Malaysia was ranked the 8th largest trading nation in the world in 2009 by the World Trade Organization (WTO). It recorded a total trade value of RM1.169 trillion in 2010 and its external trade balance was at a surplus of RM110.1 billion.

As a nation surrounded by seas, it is not surprising that Malaysia depends heavily on seaborne transport to facilitate its trade. An estimated 95 per cent of the nation's trade is carried in whole or in part by maritime means. Hence, the importance of its seaports and other supporting maritime trade infrastructures to the nation's economic well-being cannot be overstated.

Given this reliance, it should not come as a surprise that Malaysia was ranked 23rd in the list of the world's top maritime nations based on its registered dead weight merchant shipping tonnage. The country contributed 10.25 million DWT or 0.8 per cent of the world total merchant shipping tonnage as of 1 January 2010 and 0.8 per cent to the world total merchandise trade in terms of value.

Underscoring Malaysia's clout as a maritime nation, it boasts two of the world's top twenty busiest container ports, namely Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP), the nation's transshipment hub, and Port Klang, the national load centre. Port Klang handled 8.87 million TEU while PTP handled 6.53 million TEU in 2010, and were ranked 14th and 18th, respectively, in the list of top twenty busiest container ports by throughput handled. Johor Port, located in the southern tip of Peninsular Malaysia, is the world's largest palm oil export terminal, while Bintulu Port in the state of Sarawak on Borneo Island is the world's largest LNG export terminal.

INTRODUCTION: COMPARISON OF TRANSNATIONAL STRUCTURES EMERGING IN THE GREATER MEKONG REGION AND THE MALACCA STRAITS

In conclusion to this work, before undertaking the comparison of transnational integrations in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and the Malacca Straits (triangular cooperation between Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand and Singapore, Johor and Riau, respectively referred to as IMT-GT and SIJORI), it is worthwhile remembering the basic elements justifying the comparison of the regions chosen by the Transiter programme (Transnational Dynamics and Territorial Changes.

The first basic element in the comparison of these two emerging integrations in the context of regionalization as part of the process of globalization, concerns their location at the crossroads between major North-South and East-West international and subregional trade routes. Southeast Asia is at the junction not only between Northeast Asia and South Asia on the world container route, but also between its two components: continental for the Greater Mekong Subregion and maritime for the Malacca Straits.

These regions, located at the crossroads of world and subregional traffic, also share spatial profiles with a north-south structure resulting from the respective positions of sea coasts, rivers and highlands. The Himalayan river system, in the corner of the Asian continent, is framed by the North-South shorelines of the Indochinese peninsula. The Malacca Straits, situated between two oceans, are bordered by island and peninsular spaces structured by highlands with a north-south orientation. These two North-South profiles, combined with the abovementioned connections between world and subregional traffic, lead to a dynamic of spatial recompositions where emerging transnational North-South corridors play an essential role.

To these spatial considerations forming the basis for comparison we may also add the parallelism in the time-scale of the transnational dynamics implemented during the last two decades with the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The approach by corridors in the Greater Mekong Region and growth triangles in the straits, adopted in the first decade (1992–2001) has been superseded by a regional network approach structured by a mesh of corridors during the second decade (2002–12).

Luang Namtha, Oudomxay and Bokeo provinces, located in the North- Western part of Lao PDR, have benefited long ago from a strategic position at the crossroads between Thailand, China, Myanmar and Vietnam. They were part of the caravan trade network that thrived between the thirteenth and nineteenth century, and then, of the Golden Triangle opium trade. Due to its geographical assets and its cross-border trade linkages, Northern Lao PDR is once again at the forefront of the regional stage through the implementation of the GMS North-South Economic Corridor (NSEC), which links Kunming to Bangkok by crossing the Northern provinces of Lao PDR. However, this regional integration process also means dramatic socio-economic changes in the remote and impoverished Upland Lao PDR. Will Northern Lao PDR be able to reap the benefits from the NSEC eventually? How is the NSEC impacting on local livelihoods, and who are the main drivers of change?

This research aims to examine the Asian Development Bank's argument that Lao PDR could become the crossroads of the trade routes in the GMS if this landlocked country manages to turn to its advantage the migration and transnational networks passing through its territory. I will explore the role of Chinese networks in regional trade, since the increasing flow of Chinese newcomers into Lao PDR is obviously metamorphosing the socio-economic landscape of the region. The present research is based on empirical data — interviews with Chinese migrants and Lao officials as well as analysis of socioeconomic statistics and reports — collected between 2007 and 2009 during several fieldwork studies carried out in the main cities of three Northern provinces of Lao PDR (Oudomxay, Luang Namtha, Bokeo) affected by the NSEC (see Map 18.1).

First, I will describe what is at stake since Lao PDR has been involved in the GMS programme, and specifically in the case of implementing the NSEC. Then, I will describe how Chinese newcomers are gradually weaving their transnational networks into Lao economy and how they are accelerating the pace of change in the region.

If environment affects poverty, it is primarily via economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate how environment affects economic growth. My interest is to find a way to have the environment, economic growth, and poverty reduction interact in a way that results in “pro-poor green growth”. In the first section, I briefly review the relationship between economic growth and poverty. Previous studies and experiences from Korea are introduced. In the second section, I investigate the relationship between the environment and economic growth using empirical findings and a theoretical model. The aim of that section is to find a way that the environment and economic growth can get along. I also deal with the relationship between economic growth and inequality. The poverty rate depends on the nature of economic growth. The third section is about government roles in making growth green and poverty-reducing. It reviews findings from the empirical literature and presents conclusions drawn from the experiences of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The fourth section concludes the essay.

ECONOMIC GROWTH AND POVERTY

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders adopted eight goals (the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs). Reducing poverty and hunger and ensuring environmental sustainability were among them. Policy makers and scholars search for ways to achieve economic growth that is “sustainable” and “pro-poor”. What is pro- poor growth? To answer this question, let us look at Figure 6.1. The figure plots several cases of GDP growth rate and the growth rate of poor people's income. A possible definition of pro-poor growth is a rate of income growth for the poor that is higher than the rate of GDP growth (Kakwani and Pernia 2000). According to this definition, points A and E would be candidates for pro-poor growth. Another definition focuses on the status of the poor (Ravallion and Chen 2003). Specifically, as long as economic growth improves the income of the poor, it could be regarded as pro-poor. By this definition, points A, B, C, and D would be examples of pro-poor growth. It is difficult to decide which definition is superior because both have their pros and cons.