Water Security, Riparian Identity and Korean Nation Branding in the Mekong Subregion

Abstract

Environmental security has traditionally been placed as a low politics issue in a period of increasing interdependence of transborder issues. This is occurring in the context of regional convergences between hegemonic and hydrological cycles. The Mekong subregional space is being constructed and represented by major donor and recipient stakeholders as a potential and proven site of geo‐economic opportunity and risk assessment. With more stakeholders involved there is more market competition for access to subregional resources. This paper argues that the engendering of donor competition is creating the need for new strategies of state‐competition and solidarity with recipient states, which have been key to Korean Official Development Assistance (ODA) in selling the development experience. This is increasingly legitimated by particular forms of strategic nation‐branding techniques to generate both specific South–South solidarity and the sharing of the development experience through the managing of the opportunity costs of climate change.