The role of institutional capacity in enabling climate change adaptation (original) (raw)

2008, Irrigation and Drainage Systems

invited 22 scientists from Japan and 10 other countries to share their analysis of an equal number of cases of transborder environments and natural resources, where bilateral or multilateral management is urgently needed. The symposium was held December 5 to 7 at Kyoto University. This CIAS Discussion Paper with the same title "Transborder Environmental and Natural Resource Management" includes 17 papers that were presented at the symposium. The cases discussed by the 22 scientists covered different habitats and resources, including river systems in Europe and the Greater Mekong Sub-region, international sea commodities like tuna fish and sea cucumber, tropical forest habitats in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America that cross from one country's borderlands into the neighbor's, and even yellow dust that originates in Chinese and Mongolian deserts, but impacts the daily lives of people in Korea and elsewhere. The participants all agreed that transborder management of environments and natural resources shared by two or more countries is urgent and widespread, but that the great diversity of cases makes it difficult to draw generally applicable conclusions and principles. The analysis of the cases presented focus on regulatory and policy frameworks and their challenges, the negotiations and actual cooperation for transborder management, and the effectiveness of the latter where it is taking place. Some of the papers focused on tools and policies that need to be developed to address the particularities of transborder management, as opposed to management that is entirely a one country national affair. The papers demonstrate that in quite a few cases bi-or multilateral cooperation is widely advanced, especially where economic benefits, or future damage and consequently high economic costs are at stake. Multilateral management of tuna stocks, hydropower generation in the Greater Mekong Sub-region and threatening future floods in Western Europe's major rivers systems are issues that receive much attention in bilateral or multilateral forums. Transborder conservation of protected areas or endangered species has been common since the 1990s. The overall effectiveness of the bi-or multilateral management of these transborder protected areas, however, seems to be defined by the participating country that has the weakest effectiveness of its own conservation efforts. Hence, in cases where conservation efforts in one country are marred by a lack of funds, institutional weaknesses or corruption, engagement in transborder conservation may not lead to the desired positive effect. Introduction to the CIAS Discussion Paper 4 Many countries with tropical forest regions were characterized by a persistent lack of presence of state institutions and application of the rule of law in their borderlands. Transborder economic and cultural integration did for many decades run ahead of the growing state presence resulting from improving infrastructure and communication. As a result in these locations tropical forest borderlanders have developed economic and cultural ties with their counterparts across the border, but these ties are constrained by national legislation and policies dictated from the centers of government. While insipient transborderland institutional coordination of natural resource management is emerging, the outcome of these initiatives are yet hard to foreseen, as they develop in a highly complicated political and institutional setting. The papers presented at the Transborder Environmental and Natural Resource Management symposium, compiled in this volume, brought together a rich experience of cases that adequately represented the complexity and diversity of the theme. The overarching conclusion of the symposium is that transborder management of environments and natural resources is urgently needed, and this needs to go hand in hand with relevant and appropriate academic research to inform future practices of this nature. Kyoto University, the ASEM Education Hub and the ASIA Europe Foundation provide financial support for the organization of the event.