Food, Livelihoods & Climate Change in the Mekong Region: Summary Report of International Workshop

From August 9-11, 2010, Focus on the Global South, the Foundation for Ecological Recovery/TERRA, World Rainforest Movement (WRM), International Rivers, Bank Information Centre and the Thai Working Group on Climate Justice (TCJ), organised a workshop entitled “Food, Livelihoods and Climate Change in the Mekong Region”. The workshop was held at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and attended by 52 representatives of local networks and civil society organizations from Myanmar, Lao PDR, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and China. The workshop was supported financially by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, KEPA, and Action Aid.

This report provides a brief summary of the key issues and points that were presented and discussed over the three days, particularly on the foreseeable impacts for fisheries, forests and agriculture in the Mekong region, and on some of the international approaches for addressing the climate crisis, such as REDD, carbon trading, and UNFCCC.  The workshop also explored what climate justice might mean in the Mekong region, and what could be done in different countries to move towards socially and ecologically just ways of tackling climate change.