‘Water war’ in the Mekong Basin?

The Mekong River system provides a crucial source of natural resources for riparian nations. However, the increasingly rapid pace of hydro‐development in the Mekong Basin is threatening the integrity of the river system, posing a real concern for Lower Basin states, which are particularly dependent on the basin. This scenario has led to warnings of armed conflict, or even ‘water war’, between riparian states. Certainly, the expanding scale of hydro‐development can be expected to continue increasing interstate tensions in the Mekong region; but are these tensions really likely to escalate to armed conflict? This paper explores this question by drawing on the water and conflict theory of Aaron Wolf. Ultimately, this paper concludes that interstate tensions over Mekong hydro‐development are unlikely to generate armed conflict. This is in part due to the strategic impracticality of such a conflict as well as the presence of a river basin management institution. Most compellingly, though, armed conflict is unlikely because the economic imperative shared by Mekong states is better served by cooperation – or at least non‐interference – than conflict, over regional hydro‐development. In closing, the paper urges that the study of water and conflict in the Mekong Basin be refocused at the intrastate level.     

Reconciliation or exclusion? Integrating indigenous and non-indigenous land management concepts for Australia’s Native Title era

Indigenous and non-indigenous concepts of land ownership and use are fundamental elements in Australian debate on the implications of Native Title for development. However these approaches are not necessarily incompatible but can be reconciled. Drawing on evidence from the central Australian rangelands, this paper argues that the adaptations of land use practised by indigenous people, who have converted their land tenure from pastoral leasehold to Aboriginal freehold land, suggest that such reconciliation is possible and practical. Provision of appropriate support tools, such as participatory extension for improved land management, or community land management planning, strengthen the integration of indigenous and non-indigenous land management approaches. Successful integration will be essential for the management of Australia’s rangelands under Native Title.     

Diaoyu Dao,Diaoyutai or Senkaku? Creative solutions to a festering dispute in the East China Sea from an ‘Island Studies’ perspective

This paper draws on extensive island examples with a view to offer ‘creative’ solutions to the ongoing dispute over the Diaoyu/Diaoyutai/ Senkaku Islands between China (and Taiwan) and Japan in the East China Sea. In spite of the rhetoric and apparent intractability of island conflicts, there are various examples from the past (and the present) that suggest how island disputes may be decided, and in ‘win–win’ ways, to the satisfaction of the different parties involved. The resolution of island territorial problems can benefit greatly from a critical appreciation of how other small islands, also contested, have had their situation resolved in non‐zero‐sum ways. In such cases, sovereignty has been shared, split/divided or expunged; in other cases, sovereignty disputes have been put aside in order to co‐develop and co‐exploit natural resources. There is also one example of a UNESCO World Heritage Site consisting of a string of small islands and surrounding waters whose management is shared between three countries.     

‘Blue boats’ and ‘reef robbers’: A new maritime security threat for the Asia Pacific?

Vietnamese ‘blue boats’ – small wooden‐hulled fishing boats – are now entering the territorial waters of Pacific Island countries and illegally catching high‐value species found on remote coastal reefs. Crossing several international boundaries and traversing a distance of over 5000 km, these intrusions have alarmed Oceanic countries, including Australia. Lacking administrative capacity as well as jurisdictional authority to effectively control the vast stretches of island coastlines individually, governments and intergovernmental bodies in the region have called for strengthened coordination of surveillance efforts while also pressuring Vietnam diplomatically. This paper reviews these latest developments and is the first to provide a focused assessment of the issue. Through the lens of Copenhagen School of securitisation theory, we analyse responses of national and regional actors and their portrayal in online media to understand how blue boats are constructed as a security threat within a narrative of maritime, food and human security. Arguably, Australia together with the Forum Fisheries Agency, who advise on the governance of offshore tuna resources, have so far acted most decisively – in a way that might see them extend their strategic role in the region. We propose a comprehensive empirical research agenda to better understand and manage this nascent, flammable and largely unpredictable inter‐regional phenomenon.     

From ‘wannabe’ Silicon Valley to global back office? Examining the socio‐spatial consequences of technopole planning practices in Malaysia

Cyberjaya is one of a long line of aspiring science and technology parks in the Asia‐Pacific region that have attempted to create a successful technopole, and in doing so become the ‘Silicon Valley of Asia’. The paper attends to the place‐making strategies through which Cyberjaya was positioned as a new ‘global hub’ for information communication technology and multimedia industries, framed as an extremely ‘sticky place’ (Markusen, 1996). That is, a place within a global economic system where local skills, infrastructure and capital attracts and makes research and development and corporate headquarters reluctant to leave. The paper considers that despite considerable infrastructural investment and state‐led urban boosterism to ‘sell’ Cyberjaya to prospective investors, more than 10 years after its completion in 1999 the development has become little more than a zone of disconnected business process outsourcing industries comprising low value‐added outsourcing activities.     

Crop and cattle production responses to tillage and cover crop management in an integrated crop–livestock system in the southeastern USA

Integrated crop–livestock systems can help achieve greater environmental quality from disparate crop and livestock systems by recycling nutrients and taking advantage of synergies between systems. We investigated crop and animal production responses in integrated crop–livestock systems with two types of winter cover cropping (legume-derived N and inorganic fertilizer N), two types of tillage [conventional disk (CT) and no tillage (NT)], and whether cover crops were grazed by cow/calf pairs or not. The 13-ha field study was a modification of a previous factorial experiment with four replications on Ultisols in Georgia, USA. Recurring summer drought severely limited corn and soybean production during all three years. Type of cover crop had little influence and grazing of cover crops had minor influence on crop production characteristics. Cattle gain from grazing of winter cover crops added a stable component to production. No-tillage management had large positive effects on corn grain (95 vs. 252 g m⁻² under CT and NT, respectively) and stover (305 vs. 385 g m⁻²) production, as well as on soybean grain (147 vs. 219 g m⁻²) and stover (253 vs. 375 g m⁻²) production, but little overall effect on winter wheat grain (292 g m⁻²) and stover (401 g m⁻²) production. Our results suggest that robust, diversified crop–livestock systems can be developed for impoverished soils of the southeastern USA, especially when managed under no tillage to control environmental quality and improve resistance of crops to drought.     

Is the variability in my crop due to genetic or environmental factors? Using heritability to solve this question

Journal of Crop Science and Biotechnology - Usually is common to see great differences among plants in our crops, this can allow us to think about selection of some plants with the best traits in...     

Perennial growth and salinity tolerance in wheat × wheatgrass amphiploids varying in the ratio of wheat to wheatgrass genomes

Since wheat and other annual cereal crops are often harvested for forage instead of grain in California, replacing them with perennial crops could save energy and reduce the release of heat-trapping gases. To assess the potential for perennial crops based on wheat, biomass yield and stand persistence were studied for nine wheat×wheatgrass amphiploids (8x to 14x) and five wheatgrass species (2x to 10x) over three seasons in the Central Valley, California. The 8x and 10x amphiploids died after one biomass harvest and a single summer period. In contrast, the 14x amphiploids, which were sterile, continued producing biomass over the entire period of the trial. They were also highly salt-stress tolerant with little decline in biomass production in response to an increase in salinity from 100 and 250 mM NaCl in a solution-culture study. The development of a salt-stress-tolerant perennial crop based on wheat for the California-type climate will require either a substantial improvement in perennial growth of low-ploidy (8x) amphiploids or the development of technology for efficient vegetative propagation of the sterile high-ploidy (14x) amphiploids.     

Resettling,disconnecting or displacing? Attending to local sociality,culture and history in disaster settings

In many disaster settings, top‐down responses emphasise ‘expert‐led’ solutions that often involve relocating disaster‐affected communities. While the intention might be to move people from harm's way and facilitate recovery, failure to attend to local pre‐disaster circumstances as well as the interplay between power, resilience and vulnerability within and around affected communities often sees resettlement reconfigure as displacement or disconnection. This oversight may even usher in a new phase of dispossession and disadvantage for marginalised groups (particularly in colonial settings). This paper explores experiences in Australia, Japan and Taiwan to reflect on what issues of local sociality, local culture and local resilience need to be attended to in framing ‘better’ disaster responses.     

Socio‐ecological transformations in a tributary region of the Mekong in Cambodia: Culture of resistance or resistance of culture?

This paper highlights the evolution of the relations between highlanders and lowlanders that took place in one of the Mekong's riparian eastern territories in Ratanakiri province. It contributes to knowledge and debate on the impacts of landscape transformation and dispossession on indigenous peoples and their culture in upland Cambodia. The first section considers the legacy of the past and emphasises successive attempts of resistance. It contributes to an understanding of why highlanders opted to live in a forest milieu, not isolated from outsiders but careful to maintain some distance. The second section delineates the evolution of the interactions between natural ecosystems and social ecosystems in the changing tributary region. The last section documents major changes that have recently occurred under the guise of development. It questions the remaining possibilities for indigenous people to continue living with dignity in a shrunken territory in the present socio‐political environment. The conclusion proposes research orientations focusing on some neglected dimensions of indigenous cultures dealing with new forms of resistances.     

Is Discrimination of 13C in Potato Leaflets and Tubers an Appropriate Trait to Describe Genotype Responses to Restrictive and Well‐Watered Conditions?

Selection for drought tolerance entails prioritizing plant traits that integrate critical physiological processes occurring during crop growth. Discrimination against ¹³C (?) in leaflets (?_leaflet) and tubers (?_tuber) was compared under two water regimes in two potato‐improved varieties selected to maintain yield under drought conditions (Unica and Sarnav) and one drought susceptible European cultivar (Désirée). In the control treatment, soil water content was kept at field capacity over the whole growth cycle, while in the drought treatment water supply was restricted after tuber initiation (50 % of field capacity). Gas exchange and N content per unit leaf area (N_area) as well as ? were assessed at different stages. Sarnav showed the highest tuber yield in both water conditions, suggesting that yield in the water restriction treatment was largely driven by yield potential in this genotype. Higher stomatal conductance (g_s) and N_area and lower ?_leaflet in well‐watered Sarnav suggested higher photosynthetic capacity. Under water restriction, Sarnav maintained higher g_s indicating that carbon diffusion was a key factor for biomass accumulation under water restriction. Our results suggest the use of ? determined after tuber initiation as an indirect selection indicator for tuber yield under both well‐watered and restricted soil water availability conditions.     

“One thing leads to another”, but where? – Gateway cities and the geography of production linkages

Although it has been argued that current configurations of extractive industries provide opportunities for developing production linkages, in other words, that “one thing leads to another”, these opportunities are not necessarily realised directly in the resource‐holding countries. This article aims to explain why the greater opportunities for creating increased production linkages may remain unrealised. While existing research on production linkages is characterised by a national scale mode of analysis, this article examines production linkages in the resource‐poor gateway city of Singapore that are intended to serve oil and gas operations at the macro‐regional level in Indonesia and Vietnam. The results reveal that a significant depth and breadth of production linkages have unfolded in Singapore, highlighting that in particular sophisticated production linkages tend to have a broader geographic scope. Moreover, the analysis identifies factors that have shifted the territorial scale of labour‐intensive and low‐technology production linkages from a macro‐regional towards a national or subnational level, to the advantage of the resource‐holding countries. These insights add some complexity to the study of production‐linkage development and emphasise the need for a multi‐scalar perspective that does not stop at national borders.     

“Bad Neighborhood” and Internet Adoption in Poor Countries: What is behind the Persistent Digital Gap?

The paper investigates the determinants of Internet adoption in poor countries, focusing on the role of macro‐geographic location (neighborhood). It is argued that neighboring countries are interconnected by various kinds of spillovers, including knowledge spillovers as well as spillovers of norms and attitudes that affect individual adoption behavior. The empirical findings support the view that Internet adoption is affected by adoption rates in neighboring countries, even when controlling for a wide range of covariates. Addressing potential endogeneity concerns using an instrumental variable approach moreover suggests these relationships to be causal. The findings imply that international policies to support Internet adoption in poor countries might be more effective if they target groups of neighboring countries rather than single countries in order to better exploit spillovers between neighboring countries.     

How do grassroot NGOs in rural Myanmar express their visions for the food system? Food security and food sovereignty as entangled narratives within NGO struggles and strategies

Recent research has promoted the idea that political struggles over food systems can be understood through the concepts of food security (the right to access food) and food sovereignty (the right to exercise control over food systems). These concepts emphasise different political priorities in the social relations of food: for the former, the promotion of decent work and the strengthening of the social safety net to enhance people's abilities to put food on their plates; for the latter, the defence of land, water and resource rights, to underpin capabilities for food own‐provisioning. The question we pose in this paper is how these priorities are articulated by grassroots non‐government organisations working at the frontline of global food poverty? Interviews with 22 representatives of food‐related non‐government organisations in Myanmar were used to elicit narratives about how they understood their challenges. The paper finds that narratives did not cohere exclusively to either the food security or food sovereignty concept, but blended ideas associated with the political priorities of both in complex and contradictory ways. These insights lend important firsthand evidence to the argument that supports a multi‐dimensional framing of the politics of food that is inclusive of the diverse struggles highlighted by food security and food sovereignty concepts.     

Is the Macy's in my mall going to close? Uncovering the factors associated with the closures of Macy's,Sears, and J.C. Penney stores

This study analyzes three national department store chains in order to identify the factors most associated with their store closures. A binary logistic regression revealed some consistencies and differences in the associations. Larger stores are less likely to close for all three chains. Macy's and Sears stores are less likely to close in large malls (than freestanding stores) and if they are located in the West. J.C. Penney stores in the west are also less likely to close than in other regions, but stores in large shopping centers are more likely to close than freestanding stores. Store age was only significant for J.C. Penney stores, and indicated that older stores are more likely to close. Implications for retail managers and city economic vitality are mentioned and future research possibilities are discussed.     

The Panama Tall and the Maypan hybrid coconut in Jamaica: did genetic contamination cause a loss of resistance to Lethal Yellowing?

We applied Bayesian population assignment methods to assess the trueness to type of four populations of the coconut cultivar Panama Tall (PNT) located in Jamaica and found that two of them presented a high percentage of off-types, while genetic contamination was low in the two others. The PNT is the pollen parent of the MAYPAN hybrid, which used to be planted in Jamaica to control an epidemic disease: Lethal Yellowing. The main source of contamination was the susceptible Jamaica Tall, thus increasing the susceptibility in the resulting MAYPAN progeny. The incidence of genetic contamination seems however to be insufficient to be the only cause of the latest outbreak of the disease. Neither the MAYPAN nor its parents can be said resistant in the present context of Jamaica.     

Can additional N fertiliser ameliorate the elevated CO2‐induced depression in grain and tissue N concentrations of wheat on a high soil N background?

Elevated CO₂ stimulates crop yields but leads to lower tissue and grain nitrogen concentrations [N], raising concerns about grain quality in cereals. To test whether N fertiliser application above optimum growth requirements can alleviate the decline in tissue [N], wheat was grown in a Free Air CO₂ Enrichment facility in a low‐rainfall cropping system on high soil N. Crops were grown with and without addition of 50–60 kg N/ha in 12 growing environments created by supplemental irrigation and two sowing dates over 3 years. Elevated CO₂ increased yield and biomass (on average by 25%) and decreased biomass [N] (3%–9%) and grain [N] (5%). Nitrogen uptake was greater (20%) in crops grown under elevated CO₂. Additional N supply had no effect on yield and biomass, confirming high soil N. Small increases in [N] with N addition were insufficient to offset declines in grain [N] under elevated CO₂. Instead, N application increased the [N] in straw and decreased N harvest index. The results suggest that conventional addition of N does not mitigate grain [N] depression under elevated CO₂, and lend support to hypotheses that link decreases in crop [N] with biochemical limitations rather than N supply.     

Genetic basis of multiple resistance to the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens St?l) and the green rice leafhopper (Nephotettix cincticeps Uhler) in the rice cultivar ‘ASD7’ (Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica)

The rice cultivar ASD7 (Oryza sativa L. ssp. indica) is resistant to the brown planthopper (BPH; Nilaparvata lugens Stål) and the green leafhopper (Nephotettix virescens Distant). Here, we analyzed multiple genetic resistance to BPH and the green rice leafhopper (GRH; Nephotettix cincticeps Uhler). Using two independent F₂ populations derived from a cross between ASD7 and Taichung 65 (Oryza sativa ssp. japonica), we detected two QTLs (qBPH6 and qBPH12) for resistance to BPH and one QTL (qGRH5) for resistance to GRH. Linkage analysis in BC₂F₃ populations revealed that qBPH12 controlled resistance to BPH and co-segregated with SSR markers RM28466 and RM7376 in plants homozygous for the ASD7 allele at qBPH6. Plants homozygous for the ASD7 alleles at both QTLs showed a much faster antibiosis response to BPH than plants homozygous at only one of these QTLs. It revealed that epistatic interaction between qBPH6 and qBPH12 is the basis of resistance to BPH in ASD7. In addition, qGRH5 controlled resistance to GRH and co-segregated with SSR markers RM6082 and RM3381. qGRH5 is identical to GRH1. Thus, we clarified the genetic basis of multiple resistance of ASD7 to BPH and GRH.