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Global Change and Sustainable Development

For the past couple of decades, many parts of the Southeast Asia region have undergone rapid social, economic and environmental transformations, and more recently economic problems.  Industrialisation, urbanisation and high rates of population and economic growth, together with the ongoing modifications to coastal areas and tropical rainforests, make the Southeast Asian region a ‘hot spot’ from both sustainable development and global change perspectives. Both perspectives are inherently linked, and their analyses need to be addressed as a set of integrated scientific and socio-economic issues (Figure i).

The issue of rapid regional environmental change, its causes and consequences, in Southeast Asia offers a good opportunity for the Southeast Asian Regional Committee for START (SARCS) to develop an Integrated Study. The thrust of the Study is ‘living with global change’ in a sustainable way, and focussing on the close interconnection between sustainable (and unsustainable) development and global change feedbacks (Figure i). The focus will, therefore, be on large-scale environmental changes likely to be of importance for the entire region or the Earth’s system. This includes both small-scale changes that occur widely and frequently, and thus collectively have an impact, as well as changes in large-scale systems, for example, the Asian monsoon.  Conversely, unique and small-scale environmental changes, for example, as a result of specific pollution problems in one city, would not fall within the scope of this study.

Figure i.
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Conceptual framework for the Integrated Study emphasises that the driving forces, impacts and response strategies are part of a system that feeds back on itself.

The Integrated Study, therefore, is concerned with the key processes of transformation, namely:

(i) agricultural intensification and expansion;
(ii) industrialisation and economic growth;
(iii) urbanisation and population growth;
(iv) institutional transformation;
(v) exploitation and development of coastal resources; and
(vi) globalisation of trade and investment.

The Integrated Study will be based on a coordinated set of experimental, observational and modelling studies involving ongoing and planned regional research programmes. The study contributes to international global change science programs, although it is primarily focussed on the issues of the Southeast Asia region.

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Overall Goal

The overall goal of the Integrated Study is to describe, understand, integrate and predict environmental changes, the natural and socio-economic factors that drive them, and their consequences for the sustainable development and management of the humid tropical marine, coastal and terrestrial ecosystems of Southeast Asia, with the primary focus on the coastal zones and continental shelf seas. This goal encompasses the full range of processes which impact on the coastal zone, including those which occur in terrestrial ecosystems higher up the catchments. The Study’s overall goal is also aimed at contributing to an understanding of the role of Southeast Asia in the Earth system.

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Purpose of the Science Plan

It is essential that there is a well-defined and scientifically rational overall framework in place for the Study so that the large number of individual, contributing studies can be designed and implemented in a coordinated way to provide a coherent regional understanding.  The Science Plan aims to provide this framework.
The Science Plan is aimed at scientists working in the region with an interest in the integration of the social and natural sciences in the study of global environmental change. By building on existing research and knowledge in the region, the Science Plan aims to stimulate innovative integration of results and stimulate research in areas where understanding is poor or the translation to appropriate policy options is ineffective.
Although the plan was initially prepared for SARCS and its affiliated network of researchers in the Southeast Asia region, participation in the study is not restricted to these networks – indeed, the broad scope of the Study demands a much wider participation.

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Key Features of the Science Plan

Strong and integrated involvement of human dimensions research.  One of the most prominent features of the Study is that the human dimensions play a major role throughout the Study.  The social sciences are engaged both in studying the drivers of change (e.g., industrialisation, urbanisation, land-cover conversion, etc) and in translating the results of the biophysical research into practical management applications.  Human activities, as drivers and responders,  are seen as an integral part of the environmental systems.

Modular structure.  The Study has been designed with a modular structure to facilitate contributions from focussed, disciplinary based component studies and to help match research with particular funding agency interests.  The nine Core Themes fall into three general areas:  (i) driving forces of environmental change; (ii) biophysical drivers and impacts; and (iii) implications for sustainable development strategies.  (see Table A)
Synthesis and integration.  Along with the advantages of the modular approach to the Study, there is a significant danger that the Study could become a set of largely independent individual projects (i.e., the status quo).  Therefore, a component explicitly devoted to synthesis and integration, based on a scientifically designed framework, to give the regional “big picture” (Core Theme 8) has been included.  SARCS should place high priority on and take the lead in implementing this component.

Emphasis on “living with global change”.  Nearly all global change studies to date pay “lip service” to the application of  biophysical research in terms of sustainable development strategies.  However, virtually none take the active step of building this work explicitly into the Science Plan.  The draft Science Plan for the Southeast Asian Integrated Study includes a component (Core Theme 9) dedicated to sustainable development strategies for several key regional issues.
Policy Relevance.  The purpose of this study is to assist the governments and regional organisations of Southeast Asia to make informed choices concerning Sustainable Development. In this region of rapidly expanding economic infrastructure, the capacity of the environment to sustain a multiplicity of human uses can be profoundly influenced by  policy decisions. This study aims to indicate to policy makers where and how human activity might be directed toward  the more sustainable economic, infrastructural and agricultural options.

Table A:
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Core Theme and Activity Structure of the SARCS Integrated Study. Note the inclusion of dedicated Activites for Integration and Synthesis (Core Theme 8) and for results transfer and policy (Core Theme 9).

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Overview of Core Themes

Core Theme 1: Industrialisation, Urbanisation and Coastal Development

The Southeast Asian economies, especially their industrial sectors, have grown so strongly during recent decades that they have been dubbed the ‘tiger economies’, at least until a recession hit the region in mid-1997 and slowed growth. Concomitant with this strong industrial growth has been a rapid shift from a predominantly rural-based population to one that is now increasingly concentrated in large cities, most of them on the coast.  This Core Theme analyses the causes and implications of industrialisation, urbanisation and coastal development on the regional environment.

The objectives are:

§ to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental protection measures in controlling the impacts of industrialisation and urbanisation on coastal and regional seas;
§ to assess the effectiveness of existing institutions in controlling transboundary airborne pollution from industrial and urban centres;
§  to improve understanding of the ecological footprint of urban centers, in particular,  the complex feedback between changing urban resource demands and land use changes in the rural hinterland and coastal zone transformations;
§ to document the drivers and socio-economic implications of  human activities in the coastal zone, in particular, the conversion of coastal wetlands and mangroves, and the exploitation of coastal zone fisheries and coral reefs.

Core Theme 2: Land-use, land degradation and decision-making in the rural hinterland 

Land-use and -cover change is an important component of global change in the rural hinterlands of Southeast Asia. Expansion and intensification of agricultural land uses will continue to meet the food, fibre, and energy needs of growing populations and changing life-styles into at least the middle of the next century.   Abandonment of land because of salinity, erosion and soil fertility problems will add to demand for new land and restoration.  The purpose of this Core Theme is to improve understanding of the causes of land-use and -cover change in the rural hinterland.
The objectives are:
§ to document the rates and spatial patterns of land use and cover change in the rural areas;
§ to understand the proximate and off-site drivers of land-cover conversion and subsequent land-use change in the rural areas;
§ to project land use and land cover changes in the rural hinterland into the future based on an improved understanding of local and external drivers and sets of agricultural land development scenarios.

Core Theme 3: Institutions and environmental change

Institutions are a key factor in understanding both the human drivers and implications of global environmental change.  Institutions are “constellations of rights, rules and relationships that define social practices and guide interactions among those who participate in them” (Young & Underdal 1997). International investment and trade institutions continue to play a key role in accelerating development of the Southeast Asia region as a whole. Their effectiveness in promoting rapid economic growth, and infrastructural change, however, has not been matched by an equivalent capacity to manage the social and environmental impacts of rapid growth The overall purpose of this Core Theme is to improve understanding of the influence of regional and global institutions on environmental change.

The objectives are:
§ to understand the influence of trade and investment on coastal development and land use and cover change;
§ to determine the role of property rights systems in determining, and responding to, land use changes in coastal and rural areas;
§ to evaluate the role and effectiveness of existing agreements and institutions in dealing with regional and global environmental change.
 

Core Theme 4: Climate variability and change

Asia is highly dependent on the monsoon, a biophysical driver of large-scale environmental change that interacts with many other human driving forces.  Variability in the onset and duration of the monsoon have profound impacts on water resources, human life, agriculture, economics and ecosystems. Extreme events, like floods, droughts and cyclones, cause loss of livelihood and millions of dollars of damage every year.  Overlying this seasonal pattern, the El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the primary source of inter-annual variability in climate for the Southeast Asia region.  The primary purpose of this Core Theme is to improve the understanding of climate variability and change in the region, with an emphasis on the Asian monsoon and ENSO. The Core Theme addresses climate variability at various scales: annual variation in the onset and duration of the monsoon; inter-annual variation as a result, primarily, of phase of the ENSO cycle and inter-decadal variation as a result of climate change and variation between ENSO events.
The objectives are:
§ to understand the role of the Asian monsoon in energy and water cycles and possible changes in the monsoon associated with global change and to improve seasonal prediction of Asian monsoonal patterns;
§ to improve understanding, and ability to predict, ENSO processes at inter-decadal time scales and how they might be affected by global change, and to improve the application of seasonal climate forecasts in the Southeast Asian region.

Core Theme 5: Biophysical responses: system-level process studies

The overall purpose of Core Theme 5 is to improve understanding of ecosystem processes throughout the catchment, from the headwaters to the coastal zone, in particular, the horizontal and vertical fluxes associated with land-use changes. The core of the work on biogeochemical and hydrological effects associated with land-use and  -cover change will be undertaken in proposed small-scale process study sites and an associated extensive network of sites down the cascade at which element fluxes are to be measured. Although a number of biogeochemical studies have been carried out in the humid tropics, particularly in the Amazon Basin, there has not yet been a study which completely accounts for all the gains, losses and transformations of key chemical elements associated with the land-clearing process and subsequent management or abandonment (or ‘closing the budget’, to account for all the major processes).
The objectives are:
§ to determine the effects of forest clearing and agricultural intensification on quantities and pathways of carbon and nutrient loss (and their regulation) in the humid tropics of Southeast Asia;
§ to determine the effects of changes in land-use, climatic factors and  human activities in the coastal zone on sedimentation, fresh water run-off and the fluxes of carbon, nutrients and selected pollutants to the coastal marine environment.
 

Core Theme 6: Biophysical responses: extensive observational studies

Core Theme 6 is designed to extend the detailed process studies under Core Theme 5 to broader spatial and temporal scales, addressing the implications for both local and regional environment. In particular the biophysical responses of the biogeochemical and hydrological cycles and vegetation communities to land-use and -cover change, atmospheric change and climatic factors.
The Objectives are:
§ to improve understanding of the impacts of land-use change on biogeochemical and hydrological cycling in Southeast Asia;
§ to predict effects of global change, including atmospheric, climate and land-use changes,  on disturbance regimes and the composition and structure of tropical forest ecosystems.
 

Core Theme 7: Past Environmental Changes

Core Theme 7 addresses the causes and consequences of past land cover and climate changes in Southeast Asia. Many environmental systems respond to changes in external forces over time periods from years to centuries, rather than hours to years.  For example, long-lived trees, rivers and deltas all have relatively slow response times.  It follows that records of change for such phenomena must be of commensurate length to provide a meaningful account of rates and nature of change.
The objectives are:
§ to describe historical changes in land use and land cover and their impacts;
§ to improve the record of natural variability of climate;
§ to document, model and generalise fluvial system responses to past climate and land use changes.

Core Theme 8: Integration and synthesis

The purpose of this Core Theme is to provide a framework of activities for the integration and synthesis of the studies conducted under the previous seven themes.  The integration should result in novel generalisations about the drivers, biophysical impacts and responses to large-scale environmental change in the Southeast Asia region. The Core Theme currently consists of eight related activities (more may be needed in the future) highlighting different conceptual approaches to integration and synthesis, from case study comparisons along gradients, through to quantitative regional models, and summary indicators and scenarios.  These activities are supported by an activity dedicated to improving regional database and information systems.
 

Core Theme 9: Sustainable development strategies

This Core Theme is concerned with the environmental and human welfare implications of development strategies.  Building on the knowledge and understanding developed through the other parts of the Integrated Study, in particular the integration activities in Core Theme 8, this theme aims to evaluate current strategies and help develop alternative strategies which would lead nations and the entire region along more sustainable development trajectories.
Development strategies arise from the interaction of institutions operating at various scales.  They include policies, guidelines and laws of governments and business, as well as the activities of non-governmental organisations and local communities.  Sustainable development here is taken in the broad sense as development that meets the needs of current generations without compromising the needs or options of future generations or neighbours.  It thus has temporal (inter-generational), and spatial (trans-boundary, intra-generational) components.   Sustainable development, thus, should be understood as development (qualitative improvement) without growth (quantitative expansion) beyond the capacity of the ecosystem (or landscape or region) to regenerate the raw materials extracted into the economy as inputs and to absorb the materials and energy discarded by the economy as waste. A sustainable development strategy is seen as a set of institutions and activities which taken together would be likely to lead towards sustainable development
The implementation of Core Theme 9, therefore, will require strong input from the human dimensions community, especially the public policy sector.

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Design

To address the comprehensive goals of the Core Theme framework requires an overall study design which encourages integration across scales, disciplines, core projects and sites.  This is addressed by four key conceptual features of the design: (1) catchments as the unit of study with co-location of research programs (2) catchment cascades to link research results from uplands to coastal seas  (3) comparative analyses among catchments sites (4) analyses at multiple, nested, scales.  These features will be essential for developing the capability to generalise across sites and scale up (and down) results.
The site sampling strategy for the biophysical studies should be based on recognition of the land-use types, size and nature of the catchment and continental shelf. Unlike the Amazon Basin, the Southeast Asian region has multiple river catchments and is, in parts, made up of many small islands. Apart from biophysical considerations, selection of sites and scales of analyses should also consider the feasibility of obtaining quantitative and qualitative data on the human driving forces of change and the scales of operation of relevant institutions. Thus, a diversity of characteristics should be considered in determining a sampling strategy to ensure a rational structure for the overall project and facilitate the scaling up of smaller scale studies to give a regional perspective.
The Study will focus on one large river system, and a number of small catchments and islands chosen to reflect the variety of socio-economic and biophysical conditions throughout the region. The Mekong River basin is favored for the large river system, for both socio-economic and biophysical reasons. There are already a large number of relevant studies underway in several smaller catchments.

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Implementation

The SARCS Integrated Study is very ambitious, well beyond the capabilities of a single institution.   The Study must therefore be implemented step-wise and through the development of research networks.  The contributions of the extensive networks of the international global change programs will be essential to the conduct of the Integrated Study, and, in turn, will benefit from the Study’s implementation.
Fortunately, there is already considerable research underway in the Southeast Asia region that can contribute to the Integrated Study.  For example, SARCS, has initiated and now completed the first phase of work on the dynamics of land-use and -cover change in four case study areas in Southeast Asia.  Other work on trace gas emissions is also well progressed and efforts have now begun to synthesise the land-use and -cover change research with the emissions studies. The IGBP Core Project Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) has already made a substantial contribution to research in the region, as has the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) Core Project, assisted by the establishment of the Impacts Centre for Southeast Asia (IC-SEA) in Bogor, Indonesia. A Southeast Asian START Regional Center has been established with computer facilities, GIS and database management capabilities and is thus ready to serve as a nodal point for data and information systems in the region.  Finally, a number of SARCS activities in the region aimed at improving the linkages between the science and policy communities have been implemented.  This experience will be a critical base upon which to build the networks and coordination structures needed to implement the Integrated Study.

In the context of international research collaboration, the Study will also contribute to the set of IGBP terrestrial transects. The transects are rapidly gaining acceptance as a major tool for facilitating collaborative global change research around the world, especially for those research projects that have to be done on a multinational scale.  Plans for two other large-scale integrated studies in the tropics have been completed, one of the Miombo woodlands of Africa and another of the Amazon Basin in South America for which work is already advanced. The Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), in particular, will provide a valuable comparison for the Southeast Asian work. There are significant biogeophysical and socio-economic differences between the Amazon and the Southeast Asian regions which, from sustainable development and global change perspectives, provide the motivation for a separate integrated research effort in each area.

Population densities, economic growth rates, industrialization strategies, role in the global economy and the rates and driving forces of forest exploitation all differ widely between Southeast Asia and Amazonia. In addition, the relative roles of external forcing (monsoon, ENSO), maritime ‘buffering’, topography and land cover in determining local and regional weather and climate patterns differ widely between the two regions. There is a marked difference in land use, with inundated cultivation practice predominant in Southeast Asia (e.g., rice) and aerated agriculture in Amazonia (relative areal dominance of pasture). Similarly, the Southeast Asian region exhibits a wider variety of drainage typologies relating to the complex underlying geology, and may require approaches to scale up quantitative and qualitative, in- and outside channel hydrology that are different from those that will be developed in Amazonia.

The Integrated Southeast Asian Study will therefore focus on its own regional characteristics and then build a body of knowledge and understanding that is complementary to the one in Amazonia and Miombo.  Together, these large scale studies will bring a significantly improved understanding of the interplay between human dimensions of global change in the humid tropics and their environmental consequences, both regional and global.

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Conclusions

Development of a comprehensive and widely accepted science plan is only the first step in building a regional scale collaborative global change study.  Since a structure for the implementation of the Integrated Study is required, the Science Plan must be communicated widely to the scientific and policymaking communities within the region, and resources must be found for the new work required to fill the gaps and for the coordination and synthesis activities that make the whole more than the sum of its parts.
Given the central role that SARCS will play in the further planning and implementation of the Study, it seems appropriate that the SARCS Secretariat should serve as the coordinating node.  Mechanisms are already established to facilitate both the input of advice and expertise from the international programme elements of the three global change research programmes and from the regional bodies that have responsibility for developing sustainable development strategies. The SARCS Committee and Scientific Advisory Panel will play a key role in implementing the plan.
The proposed Integrated Study is a framework for the implementation of a regional global change study in Southeast Asia with an emphasis on large-scale development and environmental issues of concern to policymakers in the region.  The outputs of the Integrated Study will assist the governments and regional organisations of Southeast Asia to make more informed choices concerning Sustainable Development.

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