Asian cities face the biggest environmental risks

Running Head: SUSTAINABLE ISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA
SUSTAINABLE ISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

SUSTAINABLE ISSUES IN SOUTH ASIA1
Newspaper
Global Village Space. (2020). Politicisation of water resources in South Asia: Impending omens
of war -I. Retrieved 10 March 2020, from
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/politicisation-of-water-resources-in-south-asia-
impending-omens-of-war-i/
Introduction
Sustainability is an issue that appeared as a global consideration from the last few years.
The effect of climate change and pressure of the scarcity of resources get traction and the
communities are improvingly pressurized for finding the effectiveness and sustainability related
solutions for the woes related to water. The crisis related to water resources emerged as a crucial
problems for regions of Southeast Asia, which is the most dynamic regions and is a home for
almost quarter of the global population. There are several high mountain ranges to separate the
north from the central Asia including the Karakorum, the Hindukush, and the Himalayas that
share an important amount of rivers with their branches. The reason behind the sustainable issues
in these regions includes the improving melt of the glacial in the plateau of Tibet along with the
changing pattern of rain crossing the South and Southeast Asia. These are the components that
continuously threatening the water issues for the millions people who depend on the rivers
originated in Tibet. On the other hand, China is an arid country where the water security has
been regarded as the important national threat observed during the past few years. The reasons
behind the issues include the continuous creation of dams, irrigation systems, and projects for
diversion, which are crucial to provide water to the 1.3 billion people with the assurance of

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political stability. Apart from China, Bangladesh and India are also observed with the same
issues related to water security.
Figure 1: Map of Southeast Asia regions
Discussion
Geographic perspective
Mokthsim & Salleh, (2014) mentioned that, Urbanization is the most crucial cause of
sustainable issues in the regions of Southeast Asia. It is the cause that is driving the entire region
to face the sustainability related issues. The reason behind this is the increasing amount of urban
people are moving to the cities and they are contributing tremendous problems comprising of
different aspects of life. According to the ancient history, cities are the reflection of extreme
socio-cultural achievements for the human civilization (Mokthsim & Salleh, 2014). The amount
of evolving political processes, extension of the national economies, and the alteration in the
environmental aspects are greatly influencing the lives of people of these regions. The

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urbanization process of Southeast Asia is unfolding against the concepts of socio-cultural,
political, and economic aspects. As mentioned by Mukherjee & Sovacool, (2014) the Southeast
Asian cities comprised of more than 47 percent of the entire regional population. The rate of
national urbanization is less than 20% in Cambodia, 53% in Indonesia, and 100% in Singapore
as mentioned by the data of United Nations. The demographic base of these cities are more than
294 million people with the rapid growth of urbanization. Comparing to the Pacific region of
Asia the growth of urbanization increased 2.7% from 1990s, whereas the growth of Southeast
Asia is 3.6% observed within the same period. Shaikh et al., (2017) mentioned some unique
definition of the features of urbanizations in this region. Firstly, the cities of the regions are
surviving with continuous process of change and growth. According to the researches, the period
between 1950 and 2014 the rate of urbanization grew 11 times more than observed within the
previous years. From 1990, the cities of this region almost added 154 million of inhabitants
comprising from places such as Brunei, Malaysia, Laos and Philippines, and Cambodia.
Secondly, the urbanization of Southeast Asia is broad based in spite of having several
metropolitan cities von (Rintelen, Arida & Häuser, 2017). According to the researches, during
the year of 2010 almost 73% of the population was dwelling in the smaller cities. They have
assumed that, the process will be continued during the end of 2030 at the time of more than
urban populations were living in the medium and broader size of the cities von (Rintelen, Arida
& Häuser, 2017). The metropolitan cities of this region comprised of more than 22% of the
Southeast Asia’s urban civilization. There are only two megacities in this region namely Manila
with 11.8 million people and Jakarta with 10 million people (Burton & Wurfel, 2016). The
researchers assumed that the growth of urbanization will be increased more than 13% by the end
of the year 2030. It will be attaining the by the achieving status of megacity by the places like