Bridging Systems and People-Centred Approaches in Urban Vulnerability Research: Insights for Resilience from Dawei, Myanmar

Abstract

Dawei, a coastal secondary city in southeastern Myanmar, is poised to face significant social and environmental change. Dawei’s location at the head of the Dawei River estuary, just 30 kilometres from the Andaman Sea and 350 kilometres to the west of Bangkok, has attracted increasing attention from foreign investors. Namely, to develop a Special Economic Zone, build the largest deep-sea port in the region, and connect Dawei by road to the southern economic corridor of mainland Southeast Asia. Little is known about how these developments will affect Dawei, nor how climate change will interact with such changes to shape urban vulnerability. In this chapter, we examine how Dawei’s urban systems are exposed to various climatic and non-climatic stresses and investigate how this plays out through people’s everyday livelihoods. Our analysis then turns to how people cope and adapt to social and environmental change, illuminating how social capital and the ways that people relate are fundamental to shaping resilience. We situate this analysis within the larger context of Myanmar’s political and economic transition, highlighting both the challenges that this transition poses to vulnerability and the possibility of shaping a resilient future.