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The peoples of Southeast Asia share a common need for action: a proactive engagement with and forward-looking response to the multi-level environmental and social changes which are redefining vulnerabilities and opportunities in development. Extraordinarily rapid economic development has radically transformed urban-industrial, agrarian and marine environments throughout Southeast Asia. Future development is now being constrained, however, by the consequences of decades of largely unregulated exploitation of the region's rich natural resources and biodiversity. It has also increased or altered the vulnerabilities of Southeast Asian populations to climatic variables, flooding, and global economic shifts. Critical States provides transboundary "state-of-the-science" reviews, case studies, and assessments of issues in the environmental change-development nexus, including:governance and institutional challenges, urbanization, climate change, poverty, as well as land, energy, and water use.