This book is open access under a CC BY license 4.0.

This book offers a collection of empirical case studies on the contested politics of water and associated resources in the Salween basin. The Salween River, shared by China, Myanmar, and Thailand, is increasingly at the heart of pressing regional development debates. The basin supports the livelihoods of over 7 million people, and within it there is great socio-economic, cultural and political diversity. Given the paucity of grounded social science studies in this contested basin, this book provides conceptual insights at the intersection of resource governance, development, and politics relevant to researchers, policy-makers and practitioners at a time when rapid change is underway: the basin is witnessing intensifying dynamics of resource extraction, alongside large dam construction, conservation and development intervention, that is unfolding within a complex terrain of local, national and transnational governance.