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"The environment is one of the defining issues of our times, and it is closely linked to questions and dilemmas surrounding economic development. Southeast Asia is one of the world's most economically and demographically dynamic regions, and it is also one in which a host of environmental issues raise themselves. The Routledge Handbook of the Environment in Southeast Asia is a collection of 30 chapters dealing with the most significant scholarly debates in this rapidly growing field of study. Structured in four main parts, it gives a comprehensive regional overview of, and insight into, the environment in Southeast Asia. Wide-ranging and balanced, this Handbook promotes scholarly understanding of how environmental issues are dealt with from diverse theoretical perspectives. It offers a detailed empirical understanding of the myriad environmental problems and challenges faced in Southeast Asia. This is the first publication of its kind in this field; a helpful companion for a global audience and for scholars of Southeast Asian studies from a variety of disciplines"--

Transboundary water governance has received special attention in the wake of the World Bank vice-president Ismail Serageldin's famous prediction in 1995 that, "if the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water". The water wars scenario ensures that in the world's more than 260 river basins that flow across national boundaries, primary attention is given to managing water as an international commons. A framework for such transboundary management has been in place more or less continuously in the Mekong for half a century, and it would appear that water has indeed been a force for cooperation even when brutal conflict has torn at the region.

Despite the appearance of successful basin-scale management, inter-governmental management of water as an international commons in a transboundary river basin context can also hide some troubling ways in which water as a commons is eroded in the process of development. This paper considers common property dimensions of water and the livelihood systems that they support at multiple scales within the Mekong. It goes on to look at ways in which these are impacted upon by bureaucratisation, infrastructure and commodification processes. Ironically, basin organisations can both enhance and undermine governance for the common good, depending on how they deal with commonality of interest in freshwater at various scales. The paper draws on brief case studies of current trends in water governance including river basin organisations in the Mekong (the Mekong River Commission and River Basin Committees at national levels), of infrastructure (Thailand's proposed Water Grid and Laos' Nam Theun 2 dam) and of commodified notions of water (as a development resource and as a scarce commodity to be managed through market mechanisms).

This article investigates complexities and dynamics of water governance reforms at a number of levels in the Mekong Region. It looks comparatively at countries within the region and at the Mekong as a transboundary basin. The study takes catchment management processes as a focus for reform agendas related to water and relates water management in a river basin context to wider issues of governance reform. A central argument is that the effectiveness of water governance cannot be assessed in terms of simple environmental, economic, or social outcomes, or even against a more comprehensive "triple bottom line." Governance agendas and definitions are too diverse, and stakeholder interests too complex, to come up with a straightforward "best practice" of catchment-oriented water governance toward which policy reform should aspire. Rather, catchment governance in the Mekong is an arena for negotiating more sustainable, equitable, and productive use and management of water at multiple scales.

Hirsch reviews ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THAILAND: Challenges and Opportunities edited by Philip Dearden.