10.10 GEOGRAPHIC INSIGHTS

Southeast Asia: Review and Self-Test

1. Environment: Many of Southeast Asia’s most critical environmental issues relate in some way to climate change. Deforestation is rapid in this region and is a major global source of greenhouse gas emissions, which intensify climate change. This region is also highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Increased flooding and droughts threaten food production on land and rising ocean temperatures strain aquatic ecosystems.

2. Globalization and Development: Globalization has brought both spectacular successes and occasional declines to the economies of Southeast Asia. Key to the economic development of this region are strategies that were pioneered earlier in East Asia: the formation of state-aided market economies combined with export-led economic development.

3. Power and Politics: There has been a general expansion of political freedoms throughout Southeast Asia in recent decades, but authoritarianism, corruption, and violence have at times reversed these gains.

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4. Urbanization: While Southeast Asia as a whole is only 43 percent urban, its cities are growing rapidly as agricultural employment declines and urban industries expand. The largest Southeast Asian cities, which are receiving most of the new rural-to-urban migrants, rarely have sufficient housing, water, sanitation, or jobs for all their people.

5. Population and Gender: Population dynamics vary considerably in this region because of differences in economic development, government policies, prescribed gender roles, and religious and cultural practices. With regard to gender, economic change has brought better job opportunities and increased status for women, who then often choose to have fewer children. Some countries also have gender imbalances because of a cultural preference for male children.