Southeast Asia Forum: Flooding in Southeast Asia - Causes, Consequences, and Policy Challenges
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Over the course of 2025, large areas of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam faced extensive flooding, with other countries likewise strongly affected during the year. These recent events have reminded people and policymakers across Southeast Asia of a broader trend of increasing flooding in the region, causing untold damage and disruption to people’s lives.
Questions about the causes of the flooding, its consequences, and the challenges of mitigation and adaptation are coming to figure more and more prominently on the policy agendas of governments across the region and of multilateral institutions concerned with climate change, environmental governance, and disaster risk management.
Against this backdrop, the LSE’s Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre is focusing its annual Southeast Asia Forum on the growing problem of flooding across the region. The Centre has invited leading specialists on flooding in Southeast Asia from different countries in the region and different disciplines, methodological perspectives, and areas of empirical research focus. Their presentations will cover Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam and treat the causes, consequences, and policy challenges of increasing flooding from a range of different vantage points.
Forum schedule
Mornings sessions - LSE Cheng Kin Ku Building Wolfson Theatre LG.01 (CKK LG.01)
9:15am-9:30am: Welcome and opening remarks by Prof. John T. Sidel
9:30am-10:30am: Reshaping Flood Risk Management in Thailand: From Tragedy to Strategic Paradigms, Dr. Nuanchan Singkran (Mahidol University)
This paper examines the critical deficiencies in Thailand’s historical and current flood risk management plans. By analyzing the catastrophic 2011 flood as a pivotal case study, particularly within the vital Chao Phraya River Basin, the paper identifies why traditional passive plans are ineffective in practice. These outdated approaches frequently lead to inefficient mitigation and social conflict between government bodies and local stakeholders. To address these systemic gaps, a strategic flood risk management framework is introduced. This progressive paradigm shifts focus toward non-structural measures—such as land-use planning and development controls—and prioritizes participatory collaboration. By engaging public and private sectors alongside local communities, this framework aims to resolve long-standing conflicts and secure the public support necessary for sustainable flood resilience.
10:45am-12:15pm: Rethinking Flood Risk and River Management in the Philippines: A Catchment-Scale Perspective, Dr. Pamela Tolentino (University of the Philippines)
Flood risk in the Philippines is often framed as a consequence of extreme rainfall and typhoons. Yet flooding emerges from processes operating across entire catchments, where water, sediment, land use change, and channel modification interact over time. Rethinking flood risk therefore requires closer attention to how rivers function, and how they are managed. Using the Bislak River in northwest Luzon as a case study, this presentation draws on field surveys, remote sensing, and hydraulic modelling to examine how channel confinement and aggregate extraction influence river behaviour. Findings show that measures intended to reduce flooding in one location can disrupt sediment transport, reshape channel morphology, and transfer instability elsewhere in the system. Fragmented responsibilities and short planning horizons limit effective responses to these dynamics. A catchment-scale perspective highlights the need to align river management with sediment connectivity, floodplain processes, and the realities of living with mobile rivers in the Philippines.
Afternoon sessions - LSE Cheng Kin Ku Building Thai Theatre LG.03 (CKK LG.03)
2-3:30pm: Transformed waterscapes in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta: Unravelling political relations between water management and adaptation, Dr. Thong Tran (The Australian National University)
This paper reflects on how the waterscapes in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD) have changed under the compounding impacts of climate change, upstream hydropower development, and local water infrastructure interventions (dykes) for intensified agricultural production over the past decades. It unravels the political spaces in which state-led water management and farmer-led adaptation have evolved and interacted with each other over time, with the particular focus on the floodplains and the coastal zones of the delta. While infrastructural development gains legitimacy as a key approach to deal with floods and enable farm-based livelihoods (mostly rice) of rural households in the floodplains, it conversely constrains the aspirations of coastal communities in pursuit of traditional livelihoods (shrimp) that bring comparatively higher incomes. The paper illuminates how power asymmetries are embedded in the management of water resources across the ecological zones, and how they shape community adaptation on the ground. Essentially, rural communities are forced to adapt to changing environmental conditions driven by such pro-infrastructure development policies and implement various adaptation strategies to meet their needs. The paper concludes by demonstrating an ongoing paradigm shift in policy directions from food security towards water security to address water scarcity threatening resource-based livelihoods in the delta.
3:45-5:15pm: Beyond the Sea Wall: Navigating the Politics and Governance of Coastal Flooding in Java, Indonesia, Dr. Annisa Triyanti (Utrecht University)
The northern coast of the Indonesian island of Java is facing a rapidly intensifying crisis wherein climate-driven sea-level rise collides with severe, human-induced land subsidence and coastal erosion. Recent major flooding events across Jakarta, Semarang, and Demak in late 2025 and early 2026 underscore that coastal inundation is no longer a distant risk, but an immediate reality disrupting infrastructure and displacing communities. While the physical processes of Java’s sinking coastline are well-documented, the institutional responses remain highly fragmented. This paper explores the "wicked problem par excellence" of the politics and governance of coastal flooding across different levels of Indonesian administration. A stark divide persists between national strategies favouring large-scale engineering megaprojects like sea walls and local approaches relying on ecosystem-based measures like mangrove restoration. Using the case of Demak on the northern Java coast, the paper illustrates how community organization, local leadership, and access to external support heavily influence the outcomes of ecosystem-based measures. Without coordinated regional policy, these localized efforts produce a fragmented “patchwork of protection," leaving many vulnerable groups at continued risk.
5:15-5:30pm: Closing remarks by John T. Sidel
Speaker & chair biographies
Dr. Nuanchan Singkran is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies at Mahidol University in Thailand. Dr. Singkran received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2007 with a major field in Aquatic Science and minor field in Environmental Systems Engineering. From 2008 through 2012, she worked for the Water Quality Management Bureau in the Pollution Control Department of Thailand's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. Since then, she has taught in the Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies at Mahidol University, Thailand. Besides her work in aquatic ecology and modelling, Dr. Singkran's research interests include oil spill modelling and management, flood risk analysis and management, and material flow analysis in diverse systems and city metabolisms in relation to urban development and anthropogenic influences.
Dr. Pamela Louise M. Tolentino is a river scientist currently serving as Project Chief Technical Specialist at the University of the Philippines. She recently completed her PhD in Earth Sciences and is an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, where her research focused on reconfiguring river management toward nature-based and sustainable flood solutions in the Philippines. Her work examines catchment-scale processes, sediment dynamics, and flood risk, combining field surveys, remote sensing, and hydrological modelling to understand how anthropogenic activities and environmental change reshape river systems. Dr. Tolentino works at the intersection of science and policy, collaborating with government agencies and international partners to advance evidence-based water resources management approaches that protect ecosystems and reduce flood risks for communities across the Philippines.
Dr. Thong Tran is an Honorary Lecturer at Fenner School of Environment and Society, College of Systems and Society, The Australian National University. His research focuses on the competing interface of environment and agriculture amidst escalating climate-development complexities in mainland Southeast Asia. Specifically, he works on the interdisciplinary areas of (transboundary) environmental governance, rural agricultural innovations, agricultural extension, climate change adaptation, social learning, community agency, livelihood resilience, and institutional change. Dr Thong Tran serves as an Associate Editor for Society and Natural Resources and Development in Practice. He also sits on the Editorial Board of Journal of Flood Risk Management.
Dr. Annisa Triyanti is an Assistant Professor of Disaster and Climate Risk Governance for Sustainability at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. Her research focuses on the governance of water-related disasters in coastal and delta regions, with particular attention to community self-governance and mangrove ecosystems in Asia.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
*Banner photo by Iqro Rinaldi on Unsplash
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