A Celebration in Words and Pictures of Five Countries and a Province

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (19 April 2004) - The Greater Mekong Subregion Atlas of the Environment, launched at ADB Headquarters today, champions the environment of a unique part of Asia, an area that encompasses six culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse areas.

About 250 million people, most of them in rural areas, occupy the subregion's five countries and one province: Cambodia, Yunnan Province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam.

They are linked by the mighty Mekong, the longest river in Southeast Asia. Making its way over 4,200 kilometers, the Mekong endows the subregion with a rich natural resource base. These natural resources provide both sustenance and income to the great majority of peoples in the subregion who are leading subsistence or near-subsistence lifestyles.

Published by ADB and the United Nations Environment Programme, the GMS Atlas, through detailed maps, photographs, remote sensing images, tables, graphs, and text, for the first time shows the wealth of the subregion's natural resources, the growing seriousness of environmental degradation, and the efforts being made to tackle these challenges.

The book is arranged in six parts.

• Part I provides an overview and brief geographical, economic, and social profiles of the countries that make up the subregion.
• Part II discusses the state of natural resources and environment - the watersheds, rivers, minerals, forests, wetlands, flora, and fauna - their uses in agriculture, fisheries, and industry, and the conservation of biodiversity in protected areas.
• Part III presents the peoples of the subregion, highlighting the extent of their dependence on natural resources, and showing why sustaining the environment is important for poverty reduction.
• Part IV outlines development trends in the subregion, the challenges they pose to environmental resources, and the responses needed to meet these challenges by various international organizations and the countries themselves.
• Part V presents a series of remote sensing images that provide a representative sample of the subregion's geographical diversity.
• Part VI provides more than 120 tables of statistical information on a wide range of environmental aspects of the subregion, references to the literature and Internet sites where more details can be found, and a glossary of various terms used in the Atlas.

The GMS Atlas (ISBN: 971-561-499-X), containing 224 pages, is published in hardback for $60 and softback for $40, including postage. A CD-ROM is also available containing the entire Atlas in PDF format, costing $10, including postage.

The Atlas is available by e-mailing adbpub@adb.org.

See related news release.