Water Rights and Social Justice in the Mekong Region

"Asia changes. People stream to towns and cities. Macroeconomic indicators skyrocket but inequality also increases, as does strain on the environment. The Mekong Region is at the heart of this development. Who has rights to say where to go and how this change is governed? What should be done about the injustice of marginalization? This book addresses these questions in highly pertinent and elaborate ways." – Olli Varis, Professor of Water Resources, Aalto University, Finland

"By addressing social justice issues around water in terms of rights, this impressive book goes to the heart of key governance issues facing the Mekong. Through lenses including participation, ethnicity, gender and environment, the well chosen case studies look beyond the field of water management to interrogate development in terms of its implications for rights to life and livelihood." – Philip Hirsch, Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Australian Mekong Resource Centre, University of Sydney, Australia

"This book is a fascinating contribution to water wisdom. It starts from an analysis of water rights as intimately tied to wider social relations of power, which are characterized by conflicts of interest, by negotiations and by struggle and contestation. This perspective is not just refreshing, but also very needed in times when different processes – such as globalization, climate change and a sustained policy belief in markets as efficient allocation mechanisms – all seem to work together to create ever larger gaps between those who have access to and control of water and those who have not. The different chapters brilliantly illustrate the complex linkages between water, politics and power, and show how such linkages are colored and mediated in multifaceted ways by ethnic, professional and gender identities and structures. In all, it provides important ingredients for formulating a more just water future." – Margreet Zwarteveen, Wageningen University, the Netherlands

"In all, this book is to be commended for its local storytelling, which effectively reveals how a number of water-management practices and emergent priorities have led to socially unjust and inequitable outcomes. For social science students, scholars, water practitioners, and policy-makers interested in this region, the book’s framing of development objectives in terms of livelihood security and household dependence on seasonal river flows and wetland inundation certainly offers thoughtful observations into potential alternative priorities and approaches, which are often neglected when viewed from a purely regional economic perspective" – Patricia Waters and Kenneth Kang, BioOne