The most crucial innovations will be those which enhance ecosystems, livelihoods, and peoples on the gray fringes of urban life. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asian urbanization is a demographic tendency—it is additionally a political, economic, and ecological milestone. As urban masses swell with countryside-to-city migration, increased incomes, and urban infrastructure expansion, the region grapples with a query squarely at ...
ASEAN can establish a “Green Coastal Shipping Corridor” project. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Short-sea shipping has been the backbone of maritime Southeast Asia for centuries. From Singapore and Manila ports to Indonesia’s sea lines of the archipelago and the inland water transport network of the Mekong Delta, short-sea shipping is an economic driver and a logistics imperative. Yet even as ...
Charting a New Course in a Polarized World By Mehmet Enes Beşer The promise of a “New Malaysia” first captured global attention in 2018, when a surprise electoral upset ended sixty-two unbroken years of Barisan Nasional coalition government. Pakatan Harapan coalition win—and return to politics of veteran politician Mahathir Mohamad—was welcomed as a democratic victory, a harbinger that Malaysia was ...
For ASEAN, the question is not whether to participate or not in global finance and trade—it does so already. The question is how to use that role for people and planet’s benefit, and not just profits. By Mehmet Enes Beşer ASEAN’s transformation into one of the globe’s most dynamic economic blocks has been spurred as much by domestic reform as ...
From Landfills to Living Labs By Mehmet Enes Beşer While nearly 110 million people worldwide remain undernourished, and more than 30% of all food produced is lost or wasted, the irony of food deficiency as well as over-consumption in ASEAN is both an ethical and a strategic issue. Not only is food loss a terms-of-art contradiction of fundamental equity—it’s also ...
Fueling Transition or Feeding Controversy? By Mehmet Enes Beşer As ASEAN countries race along their pursuit of cleaner, diversified energy systems, biofuels are a politically appealing, domestically sourced answer to rampant fossil fuel prices and greenhouse gas emissions. From Indonesia’s massive palm oil plantations to Thailand’s cassava fields that churn out ethanol, the region is blessed with biomass resources theoretically ...
The future depends on commitments. By Mehmet Enes Beşer Southeast Asia stands at the intersection of two compelling forces: the world’s rapidly accelerating demand for strategic minerals and increasingly integrated regional economies through trade agreements. Bauxite and nickel, copper and rare earth elements – ASEAN’s mineral resources are more strategically valuable than ever before. As the world shifts to low-carbon ...
The Strategic Case for Engaging Kazakhstan By Meymet Enes Beşer In the wake of the changing framework of international geopolitics and economic restructuring, the physical space between Central Asia and Southeast Asia—hitherto geographically circumscribed—is narrowing extremely quickly. As Central Asia’s economic and transport center, Kazakhstan is a strategically crucial gateway into the heartland of Eurasia. To ASEAN, to which decades ...
The wires are laid. The technology is tested. Now, all it takes is the political will to connect the dots. By Mehmet Enes Beşer As Southeast Asia races to keep pace with surging energy demand amidst a global decarbonization wave, one question looms over the region: how can the region deliver clean, cheap, and secure electricity at scale over a ...
ASEAN needs coherence between what it commits, what it aspires to, and what it delivers. By Mehmet Enes Beşer As the world is speeding towards a catastrophic climate tipping point, the role of the emerging economies has shifted from the periphery to center stage of global climate negotiations. Within this transformation, the ASEAN region has become a test site and ...
ASEAN–South Korea partnership is a reminder that it’s possible to establish influence on the grounds of stability, creativity, and compassion. By Mehmet Enes Beşer In the context of Southeast Asia’s post-Cold War experience of the disorder of a multipolar world of great power competition, economic fragmentation, and fluid security alignments, ASEAN continues to seek partners that will assist it in ...
A coalition of ASEAN and SCO could be the third way: pragmatic, regional, and with deep roots in Asian realities By Mehmet Enes Beşer More than three years have now passed since the Myanmar military overthrew the government in a coup, and the country remains torn apart by violence, turmoil, and deepening humanitarian crisis. The economy has imploded, civil war ...