Final Workshop

On 18^th December 2020, IRD, AFD and WANASEA⁽¹⁾ organized the workshop of the research program: Inequalities and Environmental Changes in the Mekong River Basin⁽²⁾. This one-year project is part of the European Facility for a research program on Inequalities in Developing and Emerging Countries, which is coordinated by the AFD⁽³⁾.

The workshop gathered participants from development, research institutions, and NGOs, both in Hanoi and through video conference. Project researchers presented the structure of the project, and on-progress results of the systematic analysis of the inequality-environmental change nexus in 5 countries of the Mekong region including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. By collecting comprehensive database and transparent and systematic mapping, the program provides a pool of resources for future analyses, identifies uninvestigated research questions and will provide scientific base for policy action on the theme of tenure rights and inequalities (systematic review with narrative synthesis).

The collective book with case studies on the link between environmental changes and inequalities is introduced. It is planned to be published in the first quarter of 2021.

The workshop also took the change to introduce and discuss with the stakeholders the proposal for a project: Environmental Transition and Inequalities in South-East Asia (ETIS, 2021-2027), developed under the collaboration of CREED and WANASEA. The objective of this research and capacity building project is to contribute to building the next generation of policymakers for the environmental transition, as well a network of leading sustainability science experts in South East Asia. It aims at building local interdisciplinary scientific knowledge, guide evidence-based public policies, and foster scientific and policy regional coordination that ultimately bring about the socioeconomic conditions for ecologically resilient economies in Southeast Asia. Drawing on the lessons drawn from 15 years of experience in research and capacity building programs, this six-year project aims to contribute to the design of a groundbreaking, virtuous and sustainable model of development for the region⁽⁴⁾

Mekong Research Project Final Restitution – Dec 2020

MATERIALS FOR DOWNLOAD

Introduction Activities (ppt)

Mekong Equality (ppt)

Collective book (ppt)

ETIS – Concept Note (pdf)

A research facility – To better understand inequalities (English)(pdf)

A research facility – To better understand inequalities (French)(pdf)

¹ WANASEA – “Strenghten the Production, Management and Outreach Capacities of Research in the Field of WAter and NAtural Resources in South-Est Asia
² https://www.afd.fr/en/carte-des-projets/inequalities-and-environmental-changes-lower-mekong-river-basin
³ https://www.afd.fr/en/une-facilite-de-recherche-pour-mieux-comprendre-les-inegalites
⁴ ETIS will be implemented by the Center for Research and Expertise on Education and Development (CREED, Bordeaux, France, www.creedev.org), a private organization that promotes research for
development. ETIS will be coordinated jointly by Benjamin BUCLET in Europe and Stéphane LAGRÉE in
South-East Asia.

EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities

The Research Facility on Inequalities, a partnership between the European Commission (DevCo) and AFD, has launched its series of weekly webinars. After three years of research aiming to understand and address inequalities in developing and emerging countries, it is now time to share some of the results.

Join us for the seventh session of the EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities’ webinars to be held on Monday, July 6^th at 11.00 am CEST, dedicated to the project Inequalities and environmental changes in the lower Mekong river basin.

Huynh Thi Phuong Linh, researcher at French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) in Ha Noi, will present the paper “Inequalities and Environmental changes in the Mekong region: a scoping review”, co-written with Stéphane Lagrée, Etienne Espagne and Alexis Drogoul.

WEBINAR 7 │ Monday, July 6^th 2020 11:00 CET

“Inequalities and Environmental changes in the Mekong region: a scoping review”

Huynh Thi Phuong Linh⁽¹⁾, Stéphane Lagrée⁽²⁾, Etienne Espagne⁽³⁾, Alexis Drogoul⁽⁴⁾

Click here to watch

Rising inequalities and accelerating environmental changes are two of the most significant and intertwined challenges of the twenty-first century. The Mekong River basin is both a crucial ecological constituent of the South-East Asian Region and a driving force of its economic dynamics. Numerous studies have tackled one specific aspects of the relation between environmental changes and inequalities in the region, but no holistic assessment has been conducted so far.

It is thus essential to conduct scoping and systematic reviews on the topic to help sort out the consolidated results which is useful for policy makers; then to identify from the topics where more research would be needed. The environmental aspects investigated include (but are not limited to) dam construction, pollution, resources over-extraction, land degradation and climate change impacts; their impacts vary from one group of population to another and are strongly informed by social inequalities.

This presentation covers the result of scoping review in which scientific, institutional and gray documents are scoped and filtered according to criteria of inclusion and exclusion. 14.407 studies from five countries including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam are investigated. The results will produce a systematic map of the different manifestations of environmental changes and inequalities relation studied and their distribution across countries and knowledge realms, identify gap of knowledge, and provide foundation for systematic review.

Keywords: Inequalities, Environmental changes, Mekong countries, Scoping review, Systematic mapping.

¹ French Institute of Research for Development (IRD). Contact: huynhtplinh@gmail.com, linh.huynhthiphuong@ird.fr
² Nantes University – ERASMUS+ WANASEA project
³ French Development Agency (AFD)
⁴ French Institute of Research for Development (IRD)