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 the hub of sustainable growth: can ASEAN urbanize without eroding its ecological carrying capacity? The answer, increasingly, is located in ...
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 it plays a vital role in intra-regional trade, ASEAN’s ...
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 poised to redefine itself politically, economically, and diplomatically. ...
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 by two strong exogenous drivers: financial growth and globalization. They have opened up capital markets, penetrated cross-border investment, and connected ASEAN economies into global supply chains on a previously unheard-of scale. But whereas this convergence has ...
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 a silent but powerful engine ...
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 suitable for conversion into renewable ...
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 technologies—electric vehicles, solar panels, battery ...
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 of diplomacy have been focused east ...
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 patchwork landscape marked by extremes? The answer, the object of protracted debate and yet to be attained, is in a ...
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 a war zone of what climate ambition is in the Global South. As economies grow, ...
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 promoting its regional interests without threatening it with the hegemonic designs. No other country comes to mind in this search: ...
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 has intensified, and millions have been forced into displacement. World condemnation has been abundant, but effective action has not been ...