Connecting Institutions to Govern the Environmental Consequences of Development

By Pham Phan Long
August 2026

In my recent article, The Planet Under Threat: The Urgency of Institutional Transformation, I argued that humanity has built institutions capable of accelerating development on a global scale, but has not built equally capable institutions to govern the environmental consequences of that development.

This article takes that argument further by zooming in on Southeast Asia—a region where the institutions driving development have become extensive and increasingly interconnected, while the institutions responsible for governing its environmental consequences remain fragmented across sectors and national borders. The resulting costs are not distributed equally. They fall disproportionately on poorer and more vulnerable populations whose livelihoods depend on rivers, forests, fisheries, farmland and other natural resources, even though these communities often have the least influence over the decisions that create the environmental risks.

For decades, Southeast Asia has built institutions to promote economic growth, infrastructure, trade and regional integration. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) was established in 1966, ASEAN in 1967, Mekong cooperation dates to 1957, the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation Program began in 1992, the present Mekong River Commission (MRC) was established in 1995, and Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) emerged in 2016. The MRC traces regional Mekong cooperation back to the 1957 Mekong Committee.

Together with APEC, UN agencies, national governments and private investment, these institutions have helped transform the region.

ADB and GMS have supported transportation, energy and economic connectivity. The GMS program has produced substantial infrastructure connectivity, trade and investment links among Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. LMC has strengthened connectivity and economic cooperation among China and the five downstream Mekong countries, with connectivity, production capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources and agriculture among its initial priority areas. APEC has connected Southeast Asian economies to wider Asia-Pacific markets.

The achievement is undeniable:

Southeast Asia has become increasingly connected.

But connectivity has consequences.

Roads and railways open new landscapes to development. Energy systems alter rivers and watersheds. Mines extract resources from increasingly remote areas. Industrial and agricultural production links local ecosystems to global markets. Dams alter river flows, sediment and fisheries across national boundaries.

The environmental systems affected by this development are themselves interconnected. A river does not stop at a national border. Neither do air pollution, sediment, contaminated water, biodiversity loss or the consequences of altered river flows. Yet the institutions responsible for managing these consequences remain largely divided by those same borders.

This is the central mismatch:

Regional connectivity has advanced faster than environmental governance connectivity.

And the consequences are increasingly borne by people who have the least influence over the decisions that create them.

A Development System That Became Regional

The problem is not that Southeast Asia lacks institutions. It is that its institutions were created for different purposes and have not evolved into a sufficiently connected system for governing cumulative environmental consequences.

ADB can finance infrastructure across borders. GMS can coordinate economic corridors. LMC can bring six Mekong countries together around development cooperation. APEC can facilitate wider economic integration.

Environmental governance operates differently.

Land, water, mining, energy and environmental regulation remain primarily national responsibilities. River commissions have specific geographic and technical mandates. UN agencies have specialized expertise. ASEAN provides political cooperation but operates according to principles of sovereignty, consensus and non-interference.

Each institution may function reasonably well within its mandate.

The problem emerges between the mandates.

Consider a mine near an international river.

A national government approves it. A company operates it. A financial institution may finance associated infrastructure. Scientists may monitor water quality. Communities may observe changes in fish or drinking water. A river commission may assess downstream conditions. A journalist may investigate. A UN agency may possess relevant technical expertise.

But if pollution crosses the border, there may be no institution responsible for bringing all these capabilities together quickly enough to investigate, warn affected countries, protect communities and coordinate recovery.

That is not simply institutional fragmentation.

It is a missing connective layer.

ASEAN: Political Connectivity Without Environmental Response Capacity

ASEAN is the region’s principal political institution and has played an extraordinary role in sustaining regional cooperation.

Its principles of sovereignty, consultation, consensus and non-interference have helped make cooperation politically possible among diverse states.

They also impose limits when environmental problems require action across national jurisdictions.

ASEAN can establish regional declarations and commitments, but it has limited authority to independently investigate environmental harm within a member state or compel cooperation in politically sensitive disputes.

Its 2025 Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment is an important normative development. The declaration itself recognizes the growing importance of global and transboundary environmental concerns and the particular vulnerability of affected populations.

But recognizing an environmental right does not by itself create the institutional capacity to protect that right when environmental harm crosses a border.

This does not mean ASEAN’s model should be abandoned.

It means that political regionalism needs to be complemented by environmental regionalism.

Development Connectivity Without Environmental Connectivity

ADB and GMS illustrate the difference particularly clearly.

Over decades, ADB financing and GMS cooperation have helped build roads, railways, energy systems, economic corridors and markets linking countries across mainland Southeast Asia. The GMS program was explicitly established to strengthen economic linkages among its six participating countries, and ADB describes improved infrastructure connectivity, trade and investment as central achievements.

This is regional connectivity in its most tangible form.

But the environmental consequences of that connectivity are cumulative.

A single road may have limited ecological impact. A network of roads can open an entire landscape to mining, agriculture and settlement.

A single dam can alter a river locally. Multiple dams can transform flows, sediment transport and fisheries throughout a basin.

A single mine may appear manageable. Hundreds of mines operating within interconnected watersheds create a different environmental problem.

This is why project safeguards are not the same as system safeguards.

Environmental assessment has traditionally focused heavily on individual projects. But the ecological systems affected by development experience the cumulative effects of many projects operating simultaneously.

The question must therefore evolve from:

Is this project environmentally acceptable?

to:

What happens when this project interacts with everything else being developed within the same ecological system?

That requires regional and cross-border assessment of cumulative impacts.

The Mekong: One River, Multiple Governance Systems

The Mekong demonstrates the problem particularly well.

The MRC has accumulated decades of expertise in hydrology, fisheries, sediment, floods, droughts and water management. Regional cooperation over the Mekong dates to 1957, while the 1995 Mekong Agreement established the present Commission among Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. China and Myanmar participate as Dialogue Partners.

The river is one ecological system.

Its governance is not.

The MRC’s Procedures for Notification, Prior Consultation and Agreement provide an important mechanism for information-sharing and consultation. But they do not give the MRC an enforceable authority to resolve fundamental disagreements when governments cannot agree.

Projects can therefore proceed while transboundary concerns remain unresolved.

This is not an indictment of the MRC. The institution operates within the mandate given to it by its governments.

The deeper issue is that Southeast Asia has created a mechanism capable of producing knowledge and facilitating consultation without creating an equally strong mechanism for resolving disputes when national interests conflict.

For governments, this may remain a matter of policy.

For communities downstream, it is a matter of livelihood.

The river continues to flow regardless of whether governments agree.

LMC and the Limits of Development-Centered Cooperation

LMC adds another dimension.

Since its establishment in 2016, it has strengthened cooperation among China and the five downstream Mekong countries in connectivity, production capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources and agriculture. The founding Sanya Declaration also recognized common environmental challenges and called for cooperation among the six countries.

It demonstrates how effectively governments can cooperate when their objectives are development-oriented.

But LMC does not provide an independent regional mechanism for investigating environmental damage associated with development or resource extraction, resolving transboundary environmental disputes, or coordinating corrective action when governments disagree.

Again, the issue is not whether LMC succeeds within its mandate.

It does.

The issue is that economic and infrastructure connectivity has developed without a comparable regional system for environmental accountability.

When National Boundaries Meet Regional Environmental Systems

National governments remain indispensable. They approve projects, enforce environmental laws and protect national interests.

But national jurisdiction becomes a structural limitation when environmental systems cross borders.

An upstream country may approve a mine without being able to fully account for its downstream consequences. A downstream government cannot regulate activities occurring upstream in another country. A community affected by a project may have little ability to influence the government or company responsible for it.

Private companies likewise play an essential role in investment, employment and infrastructure. But environmental costs can be shifted away from the project and onto communities, ecosystems and downstream countries.

This raises the fundamental distributional question:

Who receives the benefits of development, and who bears its environmental costs?

For vulnerable populations whose livelihoods depend directly on rivers, forests, fisheries, farmland and clean water, environmental degradation is not an externality on a balance sheet.

It can mean lost income, declining fisheries, unsafe water, damaged farmland, displacement and deteriorating health.

The people bearing these costs are often those with the least influence over the decisions that produce them.

The Missing Voices in the System

Formal institutions are not the only source of environmental intelligence.

Communities frequently detect changes in water, fisheries and forests before official monitoring systems do. Scientists generate independent evidence. NGOs monitor projects. Environmental defenders raise concerns. Whistleblowers reveal information that regulators may not possess. Journalists can connect evidence across companies, governments and borders.
These actors should not be treated simply as stakeholders consulted after decisions are made.

They are part of the region’s environmental accountability infrastructure.

A functioning regional system should therefore provide secure channels for community observations, scientific evidence, whistleblower disclosures and investigative journalism, together with meaningful safeguards for those who provide them.

A Missing Regional Environmental Layer

The region therefore does not necessarily need another institution to duplicate what already exists.

It needs a mechanism that connects what already exists.

ASEAN could establish an ASEAN Transboundary Environmental Protection Mechanism (ATEPM) as a regional environmental layer linking existing national, regional and international capabilities.

ATEPM could perform six core functions:

1. Regional Environmental Monitoring
Integrate satellite imagery, sensors, accredited laboratories, national data, scientific research and community observations.

2. Rapid Environmental Investigation
Deploy multidisciplinary teams of hydrologists, toxicologists, ecologists, public-health specialists and legal experts following serious transboundary incidents.

3. Community and Whistleblower Reporting
Provide secure channels through which communities, NGOs, scientists, environmental defenders, journalists and whistleblowers can submit evidence.

4. Transboundary Environmental Early Warning
Issue regional alerts when pollution, mining accidents, dam releases or other environmental risks threaten neighboring countries.

5. Transparency and Accountability
Maintain a public record of major incidents, investigations, findings and institutional responses, subject to legitimate confidentiality requirements.

6. Regional Environmental Fund
Provide emergency relief and long-term recovery for communities harmed by transboundary environmental impacts.

Such support could include drinking water, medical assistance, livelihood recovery, independent testing, fisheries and agricultural rehabilitation, ecosystem and watershed restoration, and long-term health monitoring.

Emergency assistance should not have to wait for governments to settle questions of liability or jurisdiction.

Environmental harm does not stop at borders. Relief and restoration should not either.

From Project Safeguards to System Governance

ATEPM would not replace existing institutions. Its purpose would be to make them work together when environmental consequences exceed their individual mandates.

It would also help shift Southeast Asia from project safeguards toward system safeguards.

The relevant question would no longer be only whether an individual mine, dam, road or industrial facility meets its requirements.

It would also be:

What happens when hundreds of individually approved projects interact within the same ecological system?

That requires cumulative-impact assessment, cross-border risk assessment, shared monitoring and greater attention to downstream consequences.

Development institutions have become increasingly sophisticated at measuring economic returns.

The region now needs comparable sophistication in measuring environmental costs, public-health consequences and the distribution of those costs among populations.

Conclusion

The challenge of the next era is therefore to change the present course—to make the institutions Southeast Asia already has work together as a system, so that institutional connectivity catches up with the region’s economic and environmental connectivity.

Southeast Asia has become increasingly connected through roads, railways, energy systems, trade, investment and supply chains. Its rivers, forests, fisheries, watersheds and ecosystems are equally interconnected across national borders. Yet the institutions governing development and its environmental consequences remain largely fragmented by those same borders.

The benefits and costs of development increasingly cross national boundaries. Governance must be able to do the same—so that environmental costs are no longer disproportionately borne by the people least able to influence the decisions that create them.

This is not a call to slow development or dismantle the institutions that have helped transform the region. It is a call to make governance catch up with the interconnected region those institutions have helped create.

Southeast Asia has spent decades building regional connectivity.
Its environment has always been interconnected.
Now its institutions must become connected enough to govern both.

References

1. Badenoch, Nathan. 2002. Transboundary Environmental Governance: Principles and Practice in Mainland Southeast Asia. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.


2. Hirsch, Philip. 2020. “Scaling the Environmental Commons: Broadening Our Frame of Reference for Transboundary Governance in Southeast Asia.” Asia Pacific Viewpoint 61 (2): 190–202. https://doi.org/10.1111/apv.12253.


3. Miller, Mark A., Jonathan Rigg, and David Taylor. 2022. “Transboundary Environmental Governance: Emerging Themes and Lessons from Southeast Asia.” Environmental Policy and Governance 32 (4): 275–280. https://doi.org/10.1002/eet.2012.


4. Ryu, Sang Hee, and Jae-Woo Lee. 2026. “ASEAN’s Adaptive Institutional Responses to Transboundary Haze Pollution.” SUVANNABHUMI 18 (1): 135–170. https://doi.org/10.22801/svn.2026.18.1.135.


5. Asian Development Bank. Greater Mekong Subregion Economic Cooperation Program. The program was established in 1992 with ADB assistance and has supported regional connectivity and economic cooperation among Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.


6. Asian Development Bank. Greater Mekong Subregion Atlas of the Environment, 2nd ed. 2012. The publication documents both the GMS’s development and connectivity achievements and the environmental challenges accompanying them.


7. Mekong River Commission. History. Documents the origins of Mekong cooperation in 1957 and establishment of the MRC under the 1995 Mekong Agreement among Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.


8. Lancang-Mekong Cooperation. 2016. Sanya Declaration of the First Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders’ Meeting. March 23, 2016. The declaration established the LMC framework and identified connectivity, production capacity, cross-border economic cooperation, water resources and agriculture among its initial priority areas.


9. ASEAN. 2025. ASEAN Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. Adopted at the 47th ASEAN Summit, Kuala Lumpur, October 2025.


10. World Health Organization, South-East Asia Regional Office. Environmental Health; Water, Sanitation and Health; Surveillance and Alert.