A precarious balance: Resources, trade and environment in the upper mekong borderlands

Abstract

For centuries, cross-border trade between China and Southeast Asia has been conducted on a small scale, hindered by the mountainous terrains and rocks in the river. Since the 1990s, large-scale river trade between Yunnan and Thailand on the Mekong flourished, placing a strain on common-pool resource use in the upper Mekong borderlands. This is exacerbated by navigation channel improvement works on the Mekong and the construction of upstream dams in Yunnan, resulting in environmental consequences, resource management issues and conflicts between Yunnan and the downstream riparian countries. This thesis adopts a political ecology approach in examining common-pool resource conflicts and trade-offs that have resulted from the competing uses among the stakeholders in the geographical space of the upper Mekong borderlands.