Cholera is a water and food-borne infectious disease that continues to be a major public health problem in most Asian countries. However, reports concerning the incidence and spread of cholera in these countries are infrequently made available to the international community. Cholera is endemic in Sarawak, Malaysia. We report here the epidemiologic and demographic data obtained from nine divisions of Sarawak for the ten years from 1994 to 2003 and discuss factors associated with the emergence and spread of cholera and its control. In ten years, 1672 cholera patients were recorded. High incidence of cholera was observed during the unusually strong El Niño years of 1997 to 1998 when a very severe and prolonged drought occurred in Sarawak. Cholera is endemic in the squatter towns and coastal areas especially those along the Sarawak river estuaries. The disease subsequently spread to the rural settlements due to movement of people from the towns to the rural areas. During the dry seasons when tributary gravity fed tap waters cease to flow, rural communities rely on river water for domestic use for consumption, washing clothes and household utensils. Consequently, these practices facilitated the spread of water borne diseases such as cholera. The epidemiologic and demographic data were categorized according to ethnic group, gender, occupation, and age of the patients. Large outbreaks occurred in north Sarawak (Bintulu, Miri, and Limbang) rather than the central (Kapit, Sarikei, Sibu) and south (Kuching, Samarahan, Sri Aman). The indigenous people, the Orang Ulu and the Iban live in longhouses built along the rivers in the low-lying areas. Whereas the Malays live in coastal areas that eat traditional uncooked seafood causing frequent water-borne infections. Data analysis showed a high incidence of cholera among low-income laborers and rural house wives as opposed to the well paid workers from government and private sectors. Infants and non-school children were 15% of the cases. This suggests household transmission widely occurs. Two cholera cases infecting cooks in a school canteen revealed poor hygiene during food preparation resulting in 229 infections of school children. The majority of the patients were the active adult group from 19 to 59 years. This finding was typical of many food-borne outbreaks where adults gathered to attend festive parties or funeral feasts. Various intervention activities and preventive measures such as surveillance, quarantine, treatment, monitoring and improving community sanitation, and health education of poor communities were performed by the Health Department and the local authorities during and after the major 1997-99 epidemics. These measures effectively prevented the emergence and spread of further epidemics.

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The study aims at clarifying the historical process of mangrove plantation conducted by local people and analyzing the present social conditions concerning the mangrove plantations in order to illuminate the role of local people in environmental conservation and elucidate the appropriate management of artificially established mangrove forests. The study was carried out in a village located on the southeast coast of South Sulawesi, featuring a coastal environment rehabilitated by the local people through mangrove plantation initiatives. They had gradually expanded the mangrove plantation by planting seedlings of Rhizophora mucronata since the 1980s and thus established 32 ha of mangrove forests along their village coastline. Community-based mangrove plantation is the most significant of the efforts to conserve and rehabilitate the coastal environment, while at the same time; it can provide local people with potential land for their economic activities, such as agriculture, coastal aquaculture and settlements. The property rights of the local people over the mangrove plantation should be taken into account by local government in order to compromise both the needs of local people and local government interests in terms of environmental conservation and coastal resources management.

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The present study focuses on the changes in Indonesia after the fall of Soeharto in 1998. The dispute involving the central government and the provincial government and Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC), a multinational company, based in East Kalimantan, over the process of divestment of KPC will exemplify that after the democratization and decentralization, a new pattern of politics has been in the making in Indonesia. The governor of East Kalimantan Suwarna has managed to set up political alliances with powerful local and national politicians. Such a political network initiated from the provincial level was a novelty that did not exist within the New Order state. Eventually Suwarna was challenging the policy decided by the central government, and directly created a climate inhospitable to foreign investors.

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The Thai police has experienced a rapid expansion during the 1930s and the 1940s when the Thai government, then under the control of the People's Party, realized that the shortage of officials and constables had prevented the provincial police from exercising effective criminal suppression, resulting in a conspicuous weakening of its authority. To solve these problems, the government substantially increased the number of policemen and in the process took over from provincial authorities the responsibility of ensuring public order. This can thus be seen as an attempt by the central state to extend its reach over functionally differentiated provincial administrations by centralizing all policing actions. This study however argues that the expansion actually failed to create an effective police agency and in the process weaken the central state's reach to the local areas. This failure was evident in the haphazard and disorganized manner in the recruitment and training of new policemen, and in the failure of the program to develop a sense of solidarity among its new personnel.

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