Copyright (c) Pacific Affairs. All rights reserved. Delivered by Publishing Technology to: National University of Singapore IP: 137.132.123.69 on: Fri, 08 Apr 2016 01:53:27 © Pacifc Afairs: Volume 88, No. 3 September 2015 499 Introduction Governing Flooding in Asia’s Urban Transition Michelle Ann Miller and Mike Douglass Abstract The twenty-frst century not only marks the advent of Asia’s frst urban era in which more than half of its population lives in cities; it is also the emergence of an age of increasing frequency and intensity of environmental disasters. Urban fooding leads disaster trends and is directly impacting the lives and livelihoods of a growing share of Asia’s population. By 2010 more than 1.5 billion people were residing in urban areas in Asia, accounting for over half of the global urban population. The pervasive coastal and riparian orientation of Asia’s rapid urban transition is placing greater numbers of people in locations that are highly exposed to foods, cyclones, tropical storms, and tsunamis. Human transformations of the natural and built environment of cities substantially add to global climate change as interactive sources of the heightening occurrence of foods. Moreover, foods contribute to compound disasters that generate cascading efects with multiple sources, interactive impacts, and long-term social and economic recovery issues. The pervasive and socially uneven impacts of foods bring acute awareness of fooding as a political issue for participatory governance. In light of these interwoven complexities, responses can no longer be carried out as sector management tasks, but must instead adopt multi-sector, multi-disciplinary, and multi-stakeholder approaches to disaster governance to directly link knowledge to action in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from foods in urbanizing Asia. Keywords: governance, foods, compound disasters, urban, Asia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5509/2015883499 ____________________ Michelle Ann Miller is a senior research fellow in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She is the co-editor (with Mike Douglass) of Disaster Governance in Urbanising Asia (Springer, forthcoming 2016). Email: arimam@nus.edu.sg Mike Douglass is professor at the Asia Research Institute and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He holds a PhD in urban planning from UCLA. His most recent book is Michelle Miller and Mike Douglass, eds., Disaster Governance in Urbanising Asia (Springer, forthcoming 2016). Email: michaeld@nus.edu.sg. * We are grateful to the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, which made possible the conference “Disaster Governance: The Urban Transition in Asia,” and a second workshop on “Governing Flooding in Urbanising Asia,” that led to the production of this special issue. For their outstanding administration of both of these events, we thank Jonathan Lee, Sharon Ong, Valerie Yeo, and Henry Kwan. For her valuable editorial support we are grateful to Tharuka Maduwanthi Prematillak.