About MAEW2021
Concept
Mekong/ASEAN Environmental Week (MAEW) is an annual regional platform and process for deeper exchange among the people, civil society groups, and other relevant actors on the issues of development, natural resources, and the environmental, social and human rights impact of investments.
In its third year, MAEW 2021 was organized on 24-30 September 2021 under the theme “Redesign ASEAN: Peoples’ voices in World Crises”. This theme follows from the 2019 and 2020 themes of "Environment and Livelihood Impacts of ASEAN Economic Integration: The peoples’ stories” and “Environment, Democracy, Livelihood, and the Regional Interconnection,” respectively. The ultimate goal of MAEW is to be a regional platform for people in the region of Southeast Asia, where key actors including representatives from communities and people's networks, civil society, the youth, and new media can exchange, analyze and debate on emerging issues that significantly affect them. The different formats of discussion, exhibitions, and actions aim to provide deeper analyses of the ongoing threats to livelihoods, natural resources, and the environment that are major sources of subsistence living in Southeast Asia. Most of all, MAEW aims for the participants to explore the ideas and possibilities toward positive change, protection, restoration, and more resilient livelihoods that can be designed and strengthened together in the most constructive and progressive ways.
Planning for MAEW 2021 is ongoing amidst the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the most serious political crisis in the region that has become the focus of global attention: the coup d’état in Myanmar in February. Already in its second year, COVID–19, as a global threat, continues to drag Southeast Asia’s economy to its worst levels, with the deepest social and economic impacts faced by workers, urban and rural poor, and small-scale food producers. The region has also become a hub of worsening natural disasters brought about by the climate crisis, particularly the extreme weather phenomenon known as hydrometeorological hazards that mostly occur in maritime Southeast Asia, affecting many communities with severe floods, droughts, storms, and landslides.
At the same time, big business investments—foreign and domestic—continue to invasively grab forest, land, and river resources and are major barriers for communities that try to build resilience and adapt their livelihoods through the sustainable use of natural resources in harmony with their environments. The deforestation and transformation of tropical rainforest lands into large-scale industrial agricultural businesses has been occurring all over the region, including in the areas that were traditionally occupied by indigenous peoples. Economic forest and land concessions often drive government policies that forcibly displace or evict people from forest areas. This happens in both, maritime countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as mainland Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Thailand, and Lao PDR.
Despite calls for accountability, the public is still unable to monitor trade and investment, especially foreign direct investments (FDI), in natural resources both from intra-ASEAN and outside investors. Similarly, large-scale hydropower dams on the Mekong mainstream, arguably the most important river in the region shared by six countries, continue to be monopolized by a handful of governments and companies. In the coming years, the regional economic recovery and stabilization paradigm will likely take place within the framework of the post-COVID-19 transition.
This will be a critical moment for the world and Southeast Asia to reconsider fundamental changes to redesign and rethink the real meaning of the "good life” everyone is looking for. The redesign must also consider the urgent issue of the climate crisis, especially in the field of energy development. However, energy deals being negotiated in the Mekong and Southeast Asia region are still hidden from the public arena and the majority of the consumers, even though their impact—aggravated by the climate crisis—has already been affecting the region for a long time. The energy and climate crisis in the region is, therefore, great challenges that deserve in-depth discussion and analysis especially among the young generation who are looking toward alternatives and opportunities from new technologies and markets since they will have to be the ones who have to contend with pressure from natural resources and environmental degradation.
While ordinary people across the region are increasingly concerned with health and economic insecurity for their families and among communities, the political movements in the region led by a new generation of activists are facing more repressive laws, seizure of power, and brutal repression. The February 1st military coup and the ensuing violence in Myanmar is severely testing the ASEAN as a regional mechanism, especially its avowed principles in support of democracy and human rights. Another major challenge in the region is also the threat to human rights defenders, particularly through the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) and rising physical harassment especially the younger generation of activists. The pandemic has also been used as a tool and pretext to control and intimidate citizens and human rights defenders to prevent their involvement in protests against development projects. Adding to the regional complexity is geopolitics and the competition between superpowers to influence both states and big businesses.
MAEW 2021 invites peoples’ networks, civil society groups, and media from all over the region to work together in search for a meaningful, just, and sustainable way of life in order to make ASEAN part of a better world. Under the theme "Redesign ASEAN: Peoples’ Voices in the World Crises," MAEW 2021 aims to offer a variety of content and activities on the politics of peoples’ communities, life, and livelihood beyond the COVID-19 pandemic; democracy; governance; energy; cultural ecology; cross-border disaster; economic trends; digital disruption; youth’s power and the way forward for a more progressive ASEAN.
The content and activities within MAEW2021 was divided into three parts;
Part 1 “ASEAN and the World, today” (lead to the question ‘Why redesign ASEAN?’)
Part 2 "Crises and actions".
Part 3 “Redesign ASEAN”.
Co-organizers
Community Resource Center (CRC), Thailand
ETOs Watch Coalition (Thailand)
Focus on the Global South (FOCUS)
Project SEVANA South-East Asia (Project SEVANA)
Public Media Network Department, Thai Public Broadcasting Service (Thai PBS)
Thai Society of Environmental Journalists (TSEJ)
