China’s recent climate-energy policy, an outcome of contemporary challenges, has generated conflict of interest amongst major stakeholders. Coupled with a boost in demand for oil, gas and coal, as well as a rapid growth in wind and solar power, it has not only affected domestic fossil fuel and renewable energy providers, but has also provoked a resource boom, affecting development pathways internationally. This book therefore seeks to examine the economic, social and ecological effects associated with China’s climate-energy policy. Assessing how the policy has been and will be formulated and implemented, it analyses the changing use of energy, CO2 emissions and GDP, as well as social and environmental impacts both domestically and internationally. It presents in-depth case studies on specific policies in China and on its resource exporting countries, such as Indonesia, Australia, Myanmar and Mongolia. At the same time, using quantitative data, it provides detailed input-output and applied computable general equilibrium analyses. Arguing that China has actively advanced its climate-energy policy to become a leader of global climate governance, it demonstrates that China ultimately relocates the cost of its climate-energy policy to resource exporting countries. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy, the environment and sustainability, as well as Chinese Studies and economics.

This edited volume brings together international authors to explore how cities around the world are implementing their commitment towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To achieve sustainability, cities choose their own goals and develop the necessary governance and resourcing mechanisms to achieve their objectives. This book highlights the innovative ways cities can plan their implementation by drawing on comprehensive research and literature reviews. Case studies from around the world, including North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, describe examples of various cities’ governance mechanisms, resourcing strategies, and implementation strategies. By showcasing these case studies, cities worldwide can emulate, transform, and execute their own vision drawing on the examples and pathways laid out by their peers. The book concludes with a comparative analysis of UN SDG implementation, contrasting the approaches and enabling communities worldwide to learn from one another and choose strategies that meet their local needs. This book will be of great interest to students, researchers, and professionals of urban sustainability, planning, smart cities, and sustainable communities. It will also be useful for city and government stakeholders including policy makers, economic development corporations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

We assess food trade among and across two Asian trading blocs, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), and China. Using most recent innovations in the empirical trade model, we find subpar trade for several countries but some over-trading as well, likely driven by weak economic fundamentals determining trade. Further, we find that Bangladesh, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Viet Nam under-export to China, and to nearly all ASEAN and SAARC countries, with the magnitude varying between 40 and 100 percent below the predicted trade levels. While checking for competing explanations, we identify trading pair time variant factors such as tariffs reducing the magnitude of under-exporting of ASEAN and SAARC countries by 1 and 3 percent, respectively. We also highlight unobserved variables such as trust between countries as factors important for strong agricultural trade.

This book proposes the alternative explanation on the pattern of ethnic conflict, especially the on-going civil war in Myanmar. Previously, most scholars accepted that narcotics play the crucial role in conflict as the resource of revenues. However, this book dramatically changes what we have ever thought before. It investigated in both field and documentary research by examining the role of narcotics in the ideological formation process and ethnic identification process. Consequently, the so-called ethno-narcotic politics was found in the way that the role of narcotics was able to be used as the source of political mobilization in various ways. Furthermore, the borderland is the appropriated area where the process of anti-ethno-narcotics identification could be emerged and later used as the main identity for the ethnic groups who remain fighting against state’s power.

The world’s key resources of energy, food and water, which are closely connected and interdependent on each other, are coming under increasing pressure, as a result of increasing population, development and climate change. In the case of China, following its recent economic surge, energy, food and water are already nearing the point of shortage. This book considers how China is working to avoid shortages of energy, food and water, and the effect this is having internationally. Subjects covered include domestic policy debates on China’s resource strategies, challenges for managing transboundary waters related to China, responses from various regions and countries to China’s ‘Go Out’ strategy, and China’s increasing energy links with Russia and declining agricultural trade with the United States. The book concludes by discussing in comparative perspective China’s outward resource acquisition activities and the consequent policy implications.

At present, collecting and analyzing data from inside Myanmar remains notoriously difficult. There is, therefore, a non-Myanmar approach towards the majority of studies on Myanmar. This is especially the case when dealing with informal or illegal trade within the country’s territory. IRASEC and the Observatory on Illicit Trafficking wanted to fill this gap by giving the floor to Professor Winston Set Aung, the founder and the director of the Asia Development Research Institute, and director of the Asia Language and Business Academy in Myanmar. He is also an MBA lecturer at the Institute of Economics in Yangon and is involved in several international and regional research programs in partnership with various research institutes including the Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand; Tokyo University, Japan; and the Institute for Security and Development Policy of Sweden, Stockholm Environmental Institute. The focus of Professor Winston Set Aung’s study is to provide a Myanmar-centric perspective on informal or illegal trade. The author offers an analysis regarding the process of informal exchanges through a pragmatic and non-contextualized critique. The causes of informal and illegal exchanges are identified and described without commenting on their origins. This intentional, measured, and calculated conservative perspective enables us to think on how to best use these flows in the current political situation in Myanmar. It seems therefore useful and relevant to make this data available to our readers.