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Project Leader	Dr. Louis LEBEL Faculty of Social Science Chiang Mai University THAILAND Tel/Fax: +66 53 263 215 E-mail: llebel@cmnet.co.th
Funding	US$ 100,000 USD
Participating countries	Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, USA, Vietnam

Introduction/Background
The assessment report is now in a relatively complete, but first draft stage. As a result of the recent meeting of authors and reviewers in Chiang Mai, all chapters are now undergoing extensive revisions, and some are largely being re-written using the data and analysis in the first draft as a foundation.  The final concluding chapter is still only in extended outline form.  The proposed title of the final report is "Policy Implications of Global Environmental Change for Development in Southeast Asia".
The scope of this initial assessment is comprehensive and considers a wide range of interacting global change issues, from changes in biogeochemical cycles, land-use and -cover changes, degradation of large-scale resources, through to loss of biodiversity and climate change.  Unlike most other regional assessments, however, the starting point of analysis is the development process (see Table 1). Each chapter first describes the development processes and its environmental and welfare implications and then considers both how global environmental changes will influence that development process as well as how that process will contribute to further global environmental change.

Table 1. Table of Contents of Assessment Report

1. Introduction: Global Change & Sustainable Development (Louis Lebel)

2. Urbanization, population and the environment (Yap Kioe Sheng, Ooi Giok-ling,  Neil Hamilton, Richard Rockwell)

3. Industrialization and economic growth (Ooi Giok-ling, Yap Kieo Sheng, Mike Rock, Richard Rockwell, Charit Tingsabadh, Islam Sardar)

4. Intensification and expansion of agriculture and forest management (Tolentino Moya, Daniel Murdiyarso, Muhamad Awang,Merrilyn Wasson, Franicia Bueno , Sharifah Mastura, Ben Malayang )

5. Coastal and marine systems (Anond Snidvongs, Nguyen Huang Tri,  Wong Poh Poh, Beverly Goh, Rolando R. Platon, Bernard Tai)

6. Trade, investment and the environment (Simon Tay, Linda Low, Nassir Hassan, Zulina Zakaria)

7. Institutional and political transformation (Ben Malayang, Suparb Pasong, Tom Burns Smith, Merrilyn Wasson, Simon Tay)

8. Conclusion: sustainable development strategies under global change (Louis Lebel et al.)

Outline of activities conducted
The main activity during the past year has been analysis and writing of the chapters, facilitated by a project web-site, electronic communications between authors, and some opportunistic face-to-face meetings.  The 2nd Author's Meeting held in January 2000 was the main meeting planned for the project (Table 2). This was supported by a small preparatory meeting of just the lead author's in August 1999 and will be followed-up by another similar meeting in April 2000 (Table 3).

Table 2.  Summary of major activities completed.

Event	Dates, Location	Key Milestones
1st Author's Meeting (Funded by START)	March 1999, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (20 participants)	Agreement on development process approach and chapter structure of assessment report Recruitment of chapter lead author's and some contributing authors Short chapter outlines
Analysis and writing of draft chapters	April 1999 - present	Recruiting full teams 1st Drafts of Each Chapter
1st Lead Author's Working Group Meeting	August 1999, Walailak University, Nakhon-si-tammarat, Thailand (8 participants)	Extended outlines/drafts (5-10 pages) Agreement on sharing/cross-cutting issues
2nd Author's Meeting	14-15 January 2000, Chiang Mai, Thailand (35 participants)	Presentations of 1st complete drafts of most of the chapters Formal feedback from peer reviewer group at meeting and electronically Agreement on approach and structure for concluding synthesis chapter

Meeting reports, lists of authors, and other project information can be obtained on the project web-site which is now kindly hosted by the Impacts Centre for Southeast Asia (IC-SEA) in Bogor, Indonesia:  http://www.icsea.or.id/gcbook/

Drafts of individual chapters can also be requested from the overall editor Dr. Louis Lebel or downloaded from the web-site if you have already been given access rights to the secure part of the web-site.

Outcomes/ Products
The main physical product of this assessment will be a book. The contents are summarised in Table 1. A hard copy of the draft report compiled prior to the 2nd Author's Meeting in Chiang Mai was forwarded to James Robertson at the APN Secretariat in January 2000. In addition to this volume we also plan to prepare a concise guide written for a non-technical, policy-oriented audience. This guide and the main volume will be launched as part of a science-policy activity including a regional workshop, a series of national development seminars and public debates. The publication and launching activities form the core of the proposal for a 2nd year of funding for this project.
In the longer-term the most important outcome of the project, however, will probably not be the book itself, but the inter-disciplinary network of researchers with a shared interest in policy and the environment, who first worked closely together on this project. This network is already a valuable resource to the region and will certainly lead to other collaborative, inter-disciplinary project. To take one example, as a result over concerns about coastal mangrove deterioration, a theme highlighted in the coastal and marine management chapter, a group of us developed a proposal late last year for primary research on coastal land-use and demographic interactions in the development of the shrimp aquaculture industry in Thailand and Vietnam. This proposal to the MacArthur Foundation was successful and the two year project will begin in earnest in April 2000. Another good example, is that the APN-funded assessment has contributed to, and benefited from, the on-going preparations of the synthesis chapter on Southeast Asia for the IGBP regional synthesis book. In summary, this assessment project, together with parallel activities in the international global change programmes coordinated by SARCS in the Southeast Asia region, will turn out to have facilitated many other activities, especially those with a human-dimensions or policy orientation.

Future Directions/ follow-up work
The next meeting of lead Author's in April will essentially wrap up the 1st year of the project. After this the main task for myself will shift from coordination and writing to editing, especially improving the integration across chapters.  We will also be following-up again to get the latest inputs from other APN-funded and related projects in the region which now just completing their activities and reports. Our ultimate target is to launch the book early in 2001.  We welcome suggestions from APN on timing and venues for this.  The activities for the 2nd year of the project form the basis for the proposal to APN for the 2nd year of funding to complete this project.

Table 3.  Summary of main activities still to be completed.

Event	Dates, Location	Expected Outcomes
2nd Lead Author's Working Group Meeting	3-4 April 2000, Bangkok, Thailand	Revised and complete drafts each chapter
3rd & Final Lead Author's Working Group Meeting	August 2000, Venue to be determined	Pre-publication check and final preparations of figures and images
Publication	Sept-Dec 2000	Available early 2001
Science-Policy Worship and book launch	February 2001, Bangkok	Co-funded by START as part of the regional open science meeting on global change and likely adjacent to IGBP annual meeting
National Launch Meetings	March 2001, various countries in region	Increased awareness and public profile of selected global change and development issues in each country.

There are potentially many follow-up activities to this initial and broad assessment. Each chapter of the book is helping identify issues requiring additional research and policy discourse. Some of these will undoubtedly be pursued by groups of authors and others.  Finally, the possibility of periodic re-assessments or the preparation of "up-dates" to take into consideration new developments in the science of global change, should be considered.

Further Information
A full copy of the latest draft report can be provided on request.