Last Days of the Mighty Mekong

ISBN-13: 9781783607198 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 384 str.

Brian Eyler

Opis

A vivid account of how one of the most remote and naturally beautiful areas in the world is being transformed into an industrial and commercial centre, the scale of which has never been seen before.

Recenzje

'Eyler has written a breathtaking account of a journey down the river, from high up in the Chinese province of Yunnan to the Mekong Delta more than 2,700 miles away [...] His book reads like a travelogue, filled with vivid descriptions of the places he visits and the people he encounters. But it is also a stark warning that the river is heading for irreparable ruin.'
Wall Street Journal

'The main villains in Brian Eyler's lament for south-east Asia's most important river, Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, are not industrial polluters or the fossil-fuel producers that have contributed to climate change and glacier-melt on the Tibetan plateau but the hydroelectric dam-builders of China and Laos.'
Financial Times

'Eyler offers an unbiased, balanced, and nuanced sitrep of the challenges facing the Mekong ...  Last Days of the Mighty Mekong is also full of stimulating facts and figures that grab and hold the reader's attention.'
Diplomat

'Readers of this book will respond as I have done to Eyler's richly evocative prose when he writes of the experiences that may be had travelling on and by the river ... I regret not having met Eyler and becoming aware of his writing only recently. I am envious of his sustained personal association with the river over a decade and a half.'
Milton Osborne, Mekong Review

'The Last Days is a timely reminder that one of the world's most remote and naturally beautiful areas is being transformed by industrial and urban development, the scale and pace of which have never been seen before. Eyler makes an erudite appeal for governments to face their past mistakes - including the over-damming of the river - and avert the further "wrecking of the Mekong's amazing eco-system".'
South China Morning Post

'Brian Eyler ... has penned an engaging and open-ended book, with a less elegiac tone than its title might imply. At many points a vividly reported travelogue.'
China Dialogue

'The definitive work on Asia's most vital river, this book is more than sound scholarship and wise policy. Brian Eyler shares lyrical and haunting stories, showing how and why the Mighty Mekong must be saved.'
Ted Osius, Former US Ambassador to Vietnam (2014-17)

'A wonderfully illuminating and beautifully written portrait of life along the Mekong, and of the forces transforming the region. Eyler offers the type of insight that can only be gained from years of on-the-ground experience.'
Elizabeth Economy, Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

'A moving requiem for a complex ecosystem upon which millions depend for their livelihoods. The book is an indictment of the failure to treat the Mekong as a single integrated system or to incorporate the local wisdom of the communities who best understand the river.'
Judith Shapiro, author of China's Environmental Challenges

'Brian Eyler tells the story of a river veiled in mystique. He sounds a warning about the ominous challenges it now faces: the encroachment of the state, breakneck hydropower development, the threats of climate change, and an increasingly powerful China bent on harnessing the Mekong to power its continued rise. This is the definitive story of the present and possible future of the Mekong, and an elegy for one of Asia's great rivers.'
Sebastian Strangio, author of Hun Sen's Cambodia

Spis treści

Introduction 1. Yubeng: The Last Shangri-la 2. Damming the Upper Mekong 3. The Erhai Valley 4. The Akha as Modern Zomians 5. The Golden Triangle in Transition 6. Laos as a Contested Space 7. Damming the Lower Mekong 8. Phnom Penh and Boeung Kak Lake 9. The Tonle Sap 10. Whither the Mekong Delta

O autorze

Eyler, Brian Brian Eyler is currently director of the IES Abroad Kunming Center at Yunnan University. He has previously worked as a director of IES Abroad's Center atBeijing Foreign Studies University and as a researcher at the University of California, San Diego