Books on the topic 'Floods Thailand'

The administration of President Richard Nixon presents several examples of how Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, used food aid as a tool to advance foreign policy goals that Congress was attempting to foreclose. This chapter discusses two such examples: (1) food aid to Thailand in 1971, intended to free other financial resources in support of Southeast Asian military purchases, and (2) White House intervention in food aid decisions involving East Pakistan/Bangladesh and India in the months after Pakistani leader General Yahya Kahn unleased military reprisals against East Pakistan that led to the latter’s war of independence and a consequent flood of millions of East Pakistani refugees into India. Nixon’s support of Yahya Kahn and reluctance to assist India and the food aid-related repercussions of that support are described in this chapter.

Since the Second World War, surprisingly few developing countries have experienced a truly sustained episode of economic and social convergence towards the structural characteristics of the advanced nations. The region of the world that has gone the furthest in that convergence is East Asia. Much has been written on comparative industrialization and development in North East Asia but relatively less on South East Asia. This book focuses on the latter and, more specifically on Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. These three nations have all undergone a major transformation—in a way never anticipated—from being poor, agrarian countries to middle-income countries that have developed an industrial and manufacturing base. The ‘puzzle’ that flows from that achievement is as follows: how did MIT achieve such a transformation, and how did they achieve the transformation with a form of economic growth that was driven by structural transformation, but that was also ‘inclusive’? Given that historically it has been thought that structural transformation tends to push up inequality, whilst inclusive growth necessitates static or even falling inequality, this last point is particularly salient to developing countries. Understanding how the transformation was possible in a relatively short space of time, the extent to which it was inclusive, and the caveats and prospects for South East Asia is thus an area of enquiry significant to all developing countries as they seek economic and social transformation.

By the 1890s, Siam (Thailand) was the last holdout against European imperialism in Southeast Asia. But the kingdom's exceptional status came with a substantial caveat: Bangkok, its bustling capital, was a port city that was subject to many of the same legal and fiscal constraints as other colonial treaty ports. This book offers new insight into turn-of-the-century Thai history by disinterring the forgotten stories of those who died “unnatural deaths” during this period and the work of the Siamese state to assert their rights in a pluralistic legal arena. The book documents the piecemeal introduction of new forms of legal and medical concern for the dead. It reveals that the investigation of unnatural death demanded testimony from diverse strata of society: from the unlettered masses to the king himself. These cases raised questions about how to handle the dead—were they spirits to be placated or legal subjects whose deaths demanded compensation?—as well as questions about jurisdiction, rights, and liability. Exhuming the history of imperial politics, transnational commerce, technology, and expertise, the book demonstrates how the state's response to global flows transformed the nature of legal subjectivity and politics in lasting ways. A compelling exploration of the troubling lives of the dead in a cosmopolitan treaty port, the book is a notable contribution to the growing corpus of studies in science, law, and society in the non-Western world.

The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) of 2018 is the most far-reaching “megaregional” economic agreement in force. Japan, the largest economy among the eleven signatory countries, played a leading role in bringing CPTPP into being and in the decision largely to preserve in its provisions the stamp of the original US involvement before the Trump-era reversal. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the first instance of “megaregulation”: a demanding combination of inter-state economic ordering and national regulatory governance on a highly ambitious substantive and transregional scale. Its text and ambition have influenced other negotiations ranging from the Japan–EU Economic Partnership Agreement (JEEPA) and the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) to the projected Pan-Asian Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This book provides an extensive analysis of TPP as a megaregulatory project for channeling and managing new pressures of globalization, and of core critical arguments made against economic megaregulation from standpoints of development, inequality, labor rights, environmental interests, corporate capture, and elite governance. Specialized chapters cover supply chains, digital economy, trade facilitation, intellectual property, currency levels, competition and state-owned enterprises, government procurement, investment, prescriptions for national regulation, and the TPP institutions. Country studies include detailed analyses of TPP-related politics and approaches in Japan, Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Contributors include leading practitioners and scholars in law, economics, and political science. At a time when the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other global-scale institutions are struggling with economic nationalism and geopolitics, and bilateral and regional agreements are pressed by public disagreement and incompatibility with digital and capital and value chain flows, the megaregional ambition of TPP is increasingly important as a precedent requiring the close scrutiny this book presents.

Abstract The influence of landscapes – topography, soil, vegetation, geology – on water quality is an inherent part of the global water cycle. Land use has adverse impacts for example when soils are exposed, significant quantities of pollutants are released (including anthropogenic materials added to those naturally present), or pollutants are added directly to the water environment. Those impacts range from industrial development to farming and urbanisation. Whilst inefficient polluting industrial effluents are still tolerated in some countries, and poorly treated sewage globally remains a huge challenge for sanitation and public health, as well as the water environment, diffuse pollution is relatively poorly recognised or understood. The operator of a sewage or trade effluent treatment plant is consciously discharging effluent to the local river. But a farmer is simply growing crops or farming livestock, a city commuter driving to work is unlikely to be thinking how brake pad wear has released copper to the water (and air) environment and hydrocarbons and particulates too; no one is intending to cause pollution of the water environment. The same applies to industrial chemists creating fire-proofing chemicals, solvents, fertilisers, pesticides, cosmetics and many more substances which contaminate the environment. Understanding and ultimately minimising diffuse pollution is in that sense the science of unintended consequences. And the consequences can be severe, for water resources and ecosystems. It's a global problem. This book comprises 18 papers from experts around the globe, presenting evidence from tropical as well as temperate regions, and rural as well as urban land use challenges. The book explores the nature of diffuse pollution and exemplifies the issues at various scales, from high-level national overviews to particular catchment and pollutant issues. By contrast, natural or semi-natural forest cover has long been recognised as safeguarding water quality in reservoirs (examples from Australia to Thailand and UK). The final chapter looks at how landscapes generally, can be designed to minimise pollution risks from particular land-uses, arguing for a more widespread catchment approach to water-aware landscape design, allied with flood risk resilience, place-making for people, and biodiversity opportunities too. ISBN: 9781789061116 (Paperback) ISBN: 9781789061123 (eBook) ISBN: 9781789061130 (ePub)