Projects > Agrarian Transition

Challenge of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia

AMRC is part of a significant five-year collaborative study of “The Challenge of the Agrarian Transition in Southeast Asia” (ChATSEA). Led by Canada Chair of Asian Research Professor Rodolphe de Koninck at University of Montreal, and supported by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council as a major collaborative research initiative, ChATSEA brings together researchers from diverse international institutions to examine a number of dimensions of rural change in five countries of the region, including Thailand and Vietnam.

The research examines trajectories of change through four main conceptual windows: globalisation, livelihoods, spatiality and actors. It will develop case studies organised into six process teams. The key processes are agricultural intensification and territorial expansion, market integration, urbanisation and industrialisation, population dynamics, intensification of regulation and environmental change.

AMRC Director Phil Hirsch is coordinating the environmental change process team in work that will intersect with other research being carried out by AMRC and its partners.

ARMC research students involved with the ChATSEA project include:

Paula Brown: The implementation of participatory approaches to aquatic resource management in Vietnam: fisheries co-management and Marine Protected Areas

Nguyen Tuong Huy: Poverty and livelihoods in coastal fishing communities around Nha Phu lagoon, Vietna.

Lindsay Soutar: Water governance, agrarian change and irrigated agriculture in Thailand and Cambodia

Duration: 2005 - 2010

Partners: SSHRC, Canada

Links: For the project website see http://www.caac.umontreal.ca/en/chatsea_intro.html

© 2005 Australian Mekong Resource Centre