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Global environmental change research in Southeast Asia

Dr. Jariya Boonjawat

Institute of Enviromental Research, Chulalongkorn University, Phayathai Road, Bangkok 10330, Thailand. Tel: 662 218 8126. Fax: 662 255 4967. Email: jariya@start.or.th.

Abstract of paper presented at the conference Environmental Change and Vulnerability: Lessons from Vietnam and the Indochina Region, Hanoi, Vietnam, April 4-5th 1998.


The Southeast Asian region comprises some of the most rapidly developing countries in the world today. Entire societies are being transformed, often into completely new and arguably more prosperous entities, within one lifetime. The comsequent pressures that this prosperity makes on the environment has to be quantified, collated and understood both for the short and long term.

The scientific community in each of the countries in the region has set for itself an agenda of strengthening the infrastructure required to support research on global environmental change both at the local and international levels.

The Southeast Asia Regional Committee for START, SARCS, is a Regional Research Network of the Global Change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (START) Programme of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

SARCS is an embodiment of the scientific communities of Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chima-Taipei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Across this region, SARCS is involved in the activities of:
  • promoting regional cooperation in global change research;
  • developing greater coherence among global, regional and national research agendas;
  • enhancing the exchange of data and the communication of research results;
  • providing scientific information to the public and making inputs to policy making bodies.

SARCS comprises scientists drawn from the national-level committees of the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP), or national global change committees throughout Southeast Asia. They work together to promote activities aimed at research, training and analysis of data related to global environmental change at the local and regional levels.

The SARCS programme initial agenda sets out to fulfill four primary objectives:

  1. improve estimates of greenhouse gas fluxes, especially in relation to changes in land use and land cover;
  2. integrate natural-social science assessments of changes in the coastal zones;
  3. develop regional databases for use in global warming studies;
  4. establish a regional network for global change research and lay the foundation for the creation of a regional research centre.

To fulfill these objectives, SARCS facilitates activities such a pilot studies, data collection, workshops, training courses, postgraduate fellowships and special studies.

These regional level research activities are designed to contribute to the wider international objectives of the IGBP, the International Human Dimensions for Global Environmental Change Programme (IHDP), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and other collaborating international bodies, as well as to the domestic policy deliberations on global environmental change.

Located at the Environmental Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand, and facilitated by the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT), the Southeast Asia START Regional Centre (SEA START RC) is one embodiment of SARCS commitment to its objectives.

The SEA START RC is part of a global network of multi-disciplinary regional centres that mobilize scientific resources and help provide the framework to make scientific assessments to support policy development. Because of its world-wide linkages through the START Regional Research Networks (RRNs), the SEA START RC is also able to provide access to regional and global databases dedicated to research on global environmental change.

The SEA START RC supports the multi-disciplinary research activities of several Regional Research Sites (RRSs), which are existing institutions within the region carrying out research on key topics of global environmental change. These RRSs are generally affiliated with both the RRNs and relevant core projects of the sponsoring programmes of the START initiative (IGBP, IHDP, WCRP).


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