Key points: With diverse transboundary links in environmental crimes increasingly prominent, there is a need to identify tools to enhance international or regional cooperation in order to strengthen forest enforcement. Mutual legal assistance (MLA) has particular potential to facilitate cooperation across jurisdictions. Provisions on dual criminality and predicate offenses often limit the scope for MLA on forest-related crimes, both within Indonesia and in partner countries. Proactive establishment of bilateral MLA agreements could strengthen MLA use, including with countries where the financiers and traders often reside and bank. Existing platforms provide opportunities to operationalize country commitments to international cooperation on environmental topics.

News: The 2012 Elizabeth Haub Prize for Environmental Law is awarded to Emeritus Professor Koh Kheng-Lian in recognition of her important and pioneering contributions to the development and evolution of environmental law in Singapore and in the whole ASEAN region. Her contributions have been particularly significant in the areas of capacity building and scholarship in the field of ASEAN environmental law. ASEAN Environmental Law, Policy and Governance: Selected Documents, in two volumes, contains a judicious compilation of relevant ASEAN environmental instruments. These documents deal with ASEAN's progressive development of environmental law, policy and governance. Volume II covers sectoral areas including natural resources and biodiversity, forestry, agriculture and food, cultural heritage, coastal and marine environment, water resources management, zoonotic diseases and the environment, energy and climate change, environmental disaster management, environmental education, environmental governance and epilogue. ASEAN has grown in stature and has an important role to play in developing global environmental sustainability. Regional organizations such as the European Union and governments of countries like the United States, Australia, China and India are partners in ASEAN's endeavours to develop a green planet. This book will be of interest in an interconnected environmental world. This book is also available as a set with ASEAN Environmental Law, Policy and Governance (Volume I).

On 28 July 2008, the ASEAN Studies Centre and the Regional Economic Studies Programme, both of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung organized a roundtable on The ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint. The brainstorming session gathered Southeast Asian experts from the region to discuss the AEC Blueprint, which ASEANs leaders had adopted at their summit meeting in November 2007, and the prospects of any obstacles to its implementation by the target year, 2015. The roundtable started with a progress report on the AEC Blueprint given by S. Pushpanathan, Principal Director of Economic Integration and Finance, ASEAN Secretariat, Jakarta. Thereafter, the sessions examined the various aspects of the Blueprint tackling the non-tariff barriers, designing a comprehensive ASEAN Investment Agreement, a regional framework for competition policy, the role of infrastructure development in economic integration, the importance of international production networks in economic integration, etc.

The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is the only Asia-Pacific-wide forum for consultations and dialogue on political and security issues. Although many articles and books have been published on the ARF, this is one of the few books that treat the forum comprehensively and from the standpoint of the region itself. It traces the ARF's origins, the efforts to move it from confidence building to "preventive diplomacy," and the forces that hold them back, analysing the strategic environment that both constrains the ARF and makes it essential. The book discusses the question of participation, describes the numerous cooperative activities that the participants undertake, and deals with the issue of institutionalization. Finally, it assesses the ARF as a forum and a process on its own terms. The book is written by the former ASEAN Secretary-General and former senior official who was involved in the ARF's early years.