This Regional scan first provides a brief overview of the structure of poverty and socio-economic development issues in the Mekong and Philippines “region”. Although there are significant differences among these countries efforts have been made to identify key sectors and generic issues that affect the participation of the poor in global processes through agriculture and commodity value chains; forests and non-timber forest products; coastal fisheries and wetland ecosystems; diversification and migration. Section 2 provides a regional perspective on the two main questions addresses by this study viz. How the rural poor can adapt their livelihood strategies to the new global context and how the enabling environment can be enhanced. It then goes on to identify gaps in the research agendas of IDRC and others in the region. This leads to the final section which contains a long list of potential research themes for IDRC/RPE