Meet MEF’s Founders
James W. Borton
James Borton, is an independent environmental policy writer and former (Hong Kong-based) foreign correspondent for The Washington Times. He contributes regularly to Asia Sentinel, Asia Times, East Asia Forum, Geopolitical Monitor, Nikkei Asian Review, The South China Morning Post, Project Syndicate and World Politics Review. He has edited four books, The South China Sea: Challenges and Promises, Islands and Rocks in the South China Sea: Post Hague Ruling, The Art of Medicine in Metaphors and Venture Japan.
He was a past National Endowment Humanities Fellow at Yale University. He has a B.A. and a M.A. with honors in American Studies from the University of Maryland. He has been a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center, the US-Asia Institute and Tufts University Science Diplomacy Center and has participated in numerous South China Sea conferences. Also, he co-founded the Mekong Environment Forum in Can Tho, Vietnam. He has just completed his latest book, Dispatches from the South China Sea: Navigating to Common Ground. He’s an avid sailor and waterman in South Carolina.
Nguyen Minh Quang
Nguyen Minh Quang is a geopolitics lecturer at Can Tho University in Vietnam and co-founder of the Mekong Environment Forum. He has specialized in conflict management (Southeast Asia), environmental security issues (Lower Mekong Subregion), and Vietnamese domestic politics over the last decade. His book chapters, commentaries, and articles appeared in publications, including Springer, Routledge, ISI/Scopus-indexed journals, The Diplomat, and East Asia Forum. Since 2017, he has delivered a number of papers and guest lectures to regional and international conferences, including COP27 in Egypt, and foreign universities. His latest edited book is The Political Economy of Education Reforms in Vietnam (Routledge 2022).
