The year 2009 was marked by rising tension in ethnic politics as different parties and stakeholder groups began to position themselves in advance of the 2010 general election, pledged by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The first general election in Myanmar in twenty years (and only third in fifty), the 2010 polls are an integral element in what could become the most defining year in a generation, setting the landscape for the introduction of a new constitution and system of government. No quantum leap of change is expected. Under the new constitution, the leading role of the Myanmar armed forces (Tatmadaw) in national politics will be maintained through reserved positions for military personnel in both parliament and government.

Nevertheless, as 2009 progressed, leaders on all sides of Myanmar's political and ethnic divisions recognized that the 2010 election is an eventuality that they cannot ignore. For while the success or failure of the 2010 polls is likely to prove historic judgment on the political road map of the military government, events during 2009 signalled that they also represent a landmark challenge for the country's different ethnic groups. Whether by contesting, boycotting, or confronting the polls, the fate of individual nationality movements could be decided for many years to come.

Adding pressure on the political actors in Myanmar were the activities of Asian neighbours. In a fast developing region, political and ethnic events in Myanmar were followed with ever greater interest. During 2009, economic engagement accelerated, with a host of major energy, trade, and infrastructure projects under way or in the early stages of planning that are likely to change the political economy forever. Many are located in the ethnic minority borderlands, meaning that stability in Myanmar and international progress are becoming closely interlinked. In the longer-term, Myanmar could be moving towards economic restructuring where the geopolitical consequences will also have an epoch-shaping impact on internal affairs.

There remains, however, a long way to go. One of the most ethnically diverse countries in Asia, the legacies of ethnic conflict have long underpinned state failure and humanitarian decline. Developments in 2009 could only provide indications of the likely trends as the SPDC attempts to initiate its plans for the 2010 election and its political road map. A critical time has arrived, causing all political actors to respond.

ABSTRACT

There is a rising interest globally in payments for ecological services (PES) as a way of promoting sustainable development. In this paper, we share the experience of the Philippines in payments for carbon storage and watershed protection. There are several projects on carbon sequestration in varying stages of design and implementation, most of which are in the planning stage. The initial lessons regard the country's potential for carbon sequestration projects, the insufficiency of carbon payments to cover the full cost of plantation development, and the high transaction cost that have limited the participation of local residents. Payments for watershed protection were more advanced. Several projects, meanwhile, are ongoing. The value of water was more easily recognised at the local and national levels. However, most of the payments did not satisfy the requirements for full-fledged PES.

INTRODUCTION

There is a lot of interest in PES schemes around the world (Landell-Mills and Porras 2002). An environmental service payment or reward refers to compensation for service, merit or effort, and/or incentives for maintaining or enhancing environmental service functions received by the sellers or paid for by the buyers of the environmental service(s) (van Noordwijk 2005). It is a voluntary transaction in which a well-defined environmental service or a land use likely to secure that service) is “bought” by a (minimum of one) buyer from a (minimum of one) provider if and only if the provider continuously secures the provision of the service (conditionality) (Wunder 2005).

The compensation and incentives can be financial, social and moral. Compensation may be made in terms of direct payments, financial incentives, or payments in kind. The rewards and payments in kind may include the provision of infrastructure, market preference, planting materials, health and educational services, skills training, technical assistance, or other material benefits. Aside from indirect and direct monetary payments, rewards can take the form of land tenure security, which may also be considered an economic incentive. Social and moral incentives and rewards may address the non-material aspects of poverty, including the recognition and respect of the community, and personal satisfaction.

The goal of Sustainability Science for Watershed Landscapes was to synthesise the third wave of sustainability science and make science directly relevant to specific pressing policy questions. Current efforts are grounded in almost four decades of international concern commencing with the Stockholm Conference on the Environment (1972), and including, to mention only a few of the key initiatives, the Brundtland Commission (1983-1987) and the resulting report, Our Common Future (1987) and the four year Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). The Assessment addressed environmental, social sustainability, and economic sustainability to meet fundamental human needs while preserving the earth's life support systems. The challenges facing us early in the 21st century are so complex that they demand trans-disciplinary approaches, coupled models, multi-scale assessment, and the involvement of stakeholders in defining our basic questions. These challenges are heightened by a changing climate. This volume presents important case studies highlighting these approaches.

It was logical for the East-West Center (EWC) to partner with the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) and the University of Hawaiʿi in convening the 2007 “International Conference on Sustainability Science for Watershed Landscapes” that resulted in this volume. The EWC has had a sustained partnership with SEARCA and its parent organisation, the Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organisation (SEAMEO). Furthermore, since at least the mid-1970's the EWC has been committed to the policy aspects of equitable access to resources in the Asia Pacific region. A milestone was the creation of what was then the Resource Systems Institute (1977) under the leadership of Harrison Brown. In the same year the Environment and Policy Institute (EAPI) was established under the leadership of William Mathews to study human interaction in tropical ecosystems. Both RSI and EAPI concentrated on international comparative studies with an Asian focus and hosted many Asian visiting researchers often leading to long-term research partnerships. Although there has been institutional change, the focus on the policy aspects of equitable access to resources is continued today by the Center's Environment, Vulnerability and Governance concentration, led by Jefferson Fox, a co-organiser of the meeting and a contributor to this volume.

ABSTRACT

We outline an approach for integrating sustainability science with policy science. We briefly review the types of policy analysis that need to be adapted to questions of environmental resource management and develop two of them in detail – optimisation and valuation for benefit-cost analysis.

Optimal resource management has to take into account the interactions with the surrounding ecosystem. Without well-established markets for these impacts, externality problems arise, leading to inefficient resource management. Traditional resource economics may not be capable of explaining the problem of resource management with interacting stocks, especially where the stock of an extractive resource impacts the stock of a second resource.

In our first application, groundwater extraction reduces the aquifer stock, thus decreasing submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) and impairing the health of the nearshore marine ecosystem. We show analytically that incorporating the external effects on nearshore resources increases the optimal sustainable steady-state level of groundwater head. Numerical simulations are illustrated using data from the west coast of the Island of Hawaiʿi. Two different approaches for incorporating the effects of SGD on marine algae are examined. We find that including algae's market value directly in the objective function calls for a slightly lower water extraction rate in all periods. If a minimum constraint is placed on the stock of the keystone species, greater conservation may be indicated. The constraint also results in non-monotonic optimal paths of water extraction, head level, and water price.

Our next application involves the beneficial effects of wetlands on the fishery in Bandon Bay, Thailand. We apply a partial equilibrium analysis to determine the effects of changes in mangrove area on off-shore fishery production. Under an open-access fishery scenario, depleting one square kilometer of mangrove area decreases the fish stock in the area by around 10.62 percent, and decreases the fishery production by 10.44 percent. If the fishery is efficiently managed, welfare losses of mangrove conversion are higher.

With an area of 236,800 square kilometres, the Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) is a landlocked country sharing 5,083 kilometres of borders with five countries, namely Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and China. It is rich in natural resources like timber and minerals (including copper, gold, tin, and gypsum), and has significant hydropower potential (in the range of 18,000 to 21,000 megawatts). With a population of 6.6 million, it is one of the most sparsely populated countries of Southeast Asia, with a population density of only twenty-three people per square kilometre. The country falls under the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s list of Landlocked Least Developed Countries (LLDC) and is clearly among the weakest economies in the ASEAN group. Two-thirds of its households go without access to electricity, half with no safe water supply, and about half of all villages are not reachable by road during the rainy season. The infrastructure remains constrained with a mere 7,141 kilometres of national roads (as of 2004) of which only 56 per cent are paved. There are no railways and only a very limited telecommunications system. Nearly half of the population (46 per cent) lived below the poverty line in 1992.

Aimed at bringing poverty down, the country prepared its National Growth and Poverty Eradication Strategy in 2003. Accordingly, the ongoing Sixth National Socio-Economic Development Plan 2006–10 (NSEDP) has placed a strong focus on poverty reduction, targeting a high growth rate in the range of 7 to 7.5 per cent. The country has achieved an annual average growth rate of over 7 per cent over the past several years as envisaged in the plan. The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has increased from $581 in financial year (FY) 2006/07 to $810 in FY 2007/08, and commendable progress has been made in reducing poverty from 46 per cent in 1992, to 33 per cent in 2003, and to around 27 per cent in 2008. The country is also aiming to graduate from LLDC status and enter the ranks of the middle income countries by the end of the Eighth NSEDP in 2020; a vision considered attainable by the World Bank.

The Year of the Fourth-Quarter Collapse

One of the most incongruous characteristics of Philippine society is the popularity of basketball among a people not noted for their height. The greater interest is in the professional game which is played in quarters rather than according to the amateur rule of dividing the game into two halves. To the Filipino fan, nothing evokes a greater thrill than the fourth-quarter rally, a situation where nothing that the favoured team does can go wrong and allows it to catch up with and surpass the score of the opposing team in the span of the last twelve minutes of the game. Moves are executed perfectly, a very high percentage of the shots go in, loose balls generally end up in or near the hands of their players, and close calls by the referee favour them. In other words, the hard work and skill of the players combined with good luck allow the favoured team to make up for what had generally been bad first three quarters to, as the cliché goes, snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Conversely, the most dismaying development for the fan would be a situation where their favoured team has built a comfortable lead through three very competently played quarters but is suddenly unable to do anything right to protect the hard-earned lead in the last. The fourth-quarter collapse is a syndrome that has affected even the very best teams. Teams with the most disciplined and highly trained and skilled players can find themselves in situations where nothing works in the fourth quarter, and end up handing over to the opposing team what looked in the first part of the game like certain victory.

The analogy of the fourth-quarter collapse is a way of describing the Philippines in 2009. The end of 2008 did not give much room for confidence. There was concern about how the Philippines would cope with the long-term effects of the global financial crisis. There were projections of overseas Filipino workers being laid off and forced to come back to the country. Not only would the volume of remittances upon which the Philippine economy had become so reliant diminish, it would also intensify the expected effects of the financial crisis on the unemployment situation.

Introduction

For Southeast Asia, the past twelve months have proven eventful on several counts. At the positive end of the spectrum, the region managed to weather the economic storm caused by the global credit crunch by minimizing its corrosive effects on local economies and populations, in no small part due to lessons learnt from the economic crisis of a decade ago. Meanwhile, advances were made in regional integration, culminating in the formation of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, while anxieties over American commitment to Southeast Asia — an issue which seized regional leaders for the most part of the administration of George W. Bush — were soothed somewhat with Washington's signing of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. On the other hand, the past year also witnessed severe strains on several bilateral relationships among Southeast Asian states, the postponement of an ASEAN Summit under dramatic circumstances, and the emergence of new conceptions of regionalism that threaten to displace ASEAN, along with its norms and values, as the core of multilateral initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region. These developments are likely to evolve further in the coming years, with both positive and negative implications for the region.

ASEAN

The monumental signing and ratification of the ASEAN Charter by ASEAN members in 2008 committed the regional organization to two summit meetings a calendar year instead of the previous practice of one summit over a twelve month period (from mid-year to mid-year). However, in order to facilitate the transition to the new schedule with minimal disruption, the appointed ASEAN Chair for the year of 2008 was to hold that position for eighteen months instead of twelve, during which time it would host a total of three summit meetings along with the accompanying ASEAN Plus Three and East Asian Summit gatherings. By way of alphabetical rotation, Thailand succeeded Singapore as the ASEAN Chair in 2008. On the surface, it seemed like a routine transition from one core founder member to another. What transpired during Thailand's tenure, however, was anything but routine.

While the full impact of the global recession of 2008 and early 2009 spared Brunei Darussalam, it nevertheless had to tread cautiously and avert any negative consequences from the economic fallout on the socio-political landscape. Brunei Darussalam — the abode of peace — is often characterized by outsiders as a place where life is easy and nothing much ever happens. To the casual observer it may appear that no dramatic events upset this state of affairs. But Brunei Darussalam has had its share of significant issues, and 2009 will be seen as an eventful year in the socio-political annals of the state.

Maturing Nation

Brunei entered its twenty-fifth year of statehood with the theme Kedewasaan Bernegara (maturity of the nation) for its national day celebrations. The aspirations of a maturing nation were emphasized in leaders’ pronouncements and policy implementations. Although a modernizing monarchical system with an appointed cabinet, the system has nevertheless become entrenched for ministers and civil servants to follow a well trodden behavioural system established over the decades. This particular attitude and work ethic finally drew a hard hitting speech from the monarch, Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah. He berated the state's ministers and officials for their lack of initiative and failure to be proactive in a number of areas that required appropriate action plans, and remarked his abhorrence of the practice of acting like robots. Although welcoming his frank observations, the nation was taken aback by such a forceful speech by the Sultan. Moreover, it became a recurrent theme in his addresses throughout the year; he has been expressing his deep concern over the state of affairs through a few other equally intense remarks, for instance, on the issue of unspent zakat money in the face of prevalent poverty within certain sections of the community, the direction the newly created Islamic University was pursuing against the original intentions that it was established for, and the lack of obligatory religious education in the revamped syllabus for public schools.

As in previous years, the legislative council met for its annual deliberations in March.

ABSTRACT

While there is a variety of anecdotal evidence, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the effects of feral pig activity on runoff and erosion in forested watersheds in Hawaiʿi. This chapter identifies the effects of feral pig activity on watershed attributes in general, with a literature search, and then specifically investigates the effects of feral pigs on runoff and soil loss within a forested watershed in Hawaiʿi through an experimental feral pig exclosure study.

Literature review indicates that feral pigs have adapted to a wide range of habitats in Hawaiʿi. They can reproduce rapidly and are capable of year round breeding. Feral pigs damage native plant communities and spread invasive plant species. They disrupt watershed hydrology by disturbing understory plant and litter layers and increasing soil compaction. Despite these impacts, feral pig eradication and control are complex cultural, political, and economic issues in Hawaiʿi. As total eradication is not likely a viable option, control methods include hunting, trapping, snaring, poisoning, and fencing. Optimal control should involve combinations of available methods and seek inputs from a wide range of stakeholders and local communities.

In the experiment, eight sites of various slopes were selected throughout the Mānoa watershed on the island of Oʿahu. On each site, paired fenced and unfenced runoff plots were constructed. Soil samples were collected from each plot in September 2007 to determine the baseline edaphic characteristics. Runoff from both plots was collected monthly from November 2007 to February 2008 following rain events and total suspended solids (TSS) in runoff were analysed. Results showed high variability in runoff and soil loss among different areas of the watershed and across the four months. Over the study period, unfenced plots generally exhibited decreasing soil cover and increasing TSS in runoff. In contrast, fenced plots displayed increasing vegetation cover and decreasing TSS in runoff. This initial data provides quantitative information on the effects of feral pigs on runoff and erosion in an watersheds. As the relationship between pigs and watershed damage becomes clearer, values can be assigned to policy instruments, such as fencing, in terms of avoided damages. This study provides some of the first data to characterise this relationship.

This chapter seeks to demonstrate how the electoral system in Malaysia has facilitated the Islamization I have thus far described, how it is biased towards maintaining BN rule, and how some elements of civil society have tried to advocate for electoral reform.

My description of the Malaysian electoral system will begin with a discussion of the socio-political impacts of the “first-past-the-post” electoral system which is in effect in Malaysia. I am concerned to show how it constrains the diversification of voices and how it encouraged PAS's declaration in 2004 that it would strive to establish an Islamic state. I will then examine how the practice of Malaysian elections further serves to constrain minority voices and to confirm the ongoing rule of the BN and the socio-political status quo. This discussion shall be undertaken with reference to the campaign of one PKR candidate during the 2004 elections. I will then examine how Malaysians have reacted to these electoral constraints and their effects by describing the heightened social activism that surrounded the 2008 elections. The cause of this social activism lay in dissatisfaction with government policy and unaccountability and, importantly, in the effects of Islamization. The reduction in democratic space resulted in citizens seeking ways to participate in democracy beyond participating directly in elections. I discuss the large public rallies that took place before the elections and the Women's Candidacy Initiative.

THE FIRST-PAST-THE-POST SYSTEM

In Malaysian elections, the winners of seats in the lower house are decided according to a simple first-past-the-post system. For the lower house, whichever candidate garners the most votes in an electorate wins the seat and any vote for a losing candidate has no representational value. The members of the upper house are largely appointed by the Sultan, and the house is not composed of members of parties in proportion to the popular vote.

For the purposes of my discussion here, I will compare the first-past-the-post system with what is often referred to as proportional representation. In short, this differs from first-past-the-post systems in that, a vote for a losing candidate or party is not wasted and retains representational value. Thus, for example, if a party were to lose every seat it contested, if it managed to nevertheless win 10 per cent of the total vote, that party would gain 10 per cent of the seats in the upper house of Parliament.