Nathalie Fau is associate professor of Geography at the University Paris 7 Denis Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, senior researcher at CESSMA, and research associate at Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC) and at the Maritime Institute of Malaysia (MIMA) in Kuala Lumpur. She obtained her Ph.D in Geography from the University of Paris in 2003. Since the late 1990s, her work has focused on regional integration processes in Southeast Asia, with a focus on maritime regions and infrastructures. She is the co-editor of Transnational Dynamics in Southeast Asia, The Greater Mekong Subregion and Malacca Straits Economic Corridors published at ISEAS in 2014.
Summary of Project:
The purpose of this project is to analyse current connectivity levels in the maritime sector in ASEAN and the challenges that need to be overcome. To realise ASEAN’s ambition to establish the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), it needs an integrated and efficient maritime transport system to facilitate seamless flow of cargos between ASEAN member nations. ASEAN has put in place a roadmap to help support the maritime integration of the region. However, ASEAN’s connectivity plan takes as its starting point the hypothesis that there exists an obvious link between building infrastructures, the opening up of territories and their inclusion in newly established networks and regional integration in South East Asia. It is precisely this hypothesis that this project is questioning, by focusing especially on maritime transport infrastructures. Furthermore, connectivity needs to be considered within ASEAN member states, but also with neighbouring countries, especially China, India and East Asian countries. To analyse maritime connectivity, we plan to collect data and map them, to analyse the arguments of ASEAN and to compare them with realities observed in the field and to have interview with shipping-industry professionals. We have a multi-scalar approach: ASEAN, Indonesia/ Malaysia/ Vietnam and a focus on Straits of Malacca and on Sulu/Sulawesi Sea.
