Posts tagged under Downloads
Bulletin 15: Good water governance matters
How do Asia's poor get water?
While Asia is home to some of the most vibrant economies in the world, it is also the global epicentre for some of the worst human development indicators. Around 700 million people live without access to safe drinking water in Asia, and a staggering two billion people do not have access to basic sanitation, exposing them to disease and often deadly infections. Poor water and sanitation governance continues to plague Asia, casting a dark shadow over the future with the United Nations expecting 3.5 billion people to be living in water-scarce and water-stress areas in the coming decade.
Access to water has important implications for health, education, poverty and the environment. Children around the world are missing an incredible 440 million school-days per year due to diseases related to water, sanitation and hygiene. In adults, these diseases lead to productivity and income losses equivalent to millions of dollars per year, mostly among the poor. Moreover, contaminated water is one of the leading causes of diarrhoea, responsible for one-fifth of child mortality under the age of five. Lack of clean water and sanitation could result in losses of billions of dollars and stunted economic progress, leaving Asia’s poorest further behind.
Bulletin 14: Low-income migration: when the marginalised move across borders
For the poor in Southeast Asia migration is a survival strategy
Migrants cross the globe and traverse countries in search of employment or micro-business opportunities; in 2010, the estimated number of international migrants worldwide was 213 million, of whom 28% were located in Asia. The estimated numbers for internal migrants are even greater at 740 million worldwide in 2009. It is known that remittances sent home by international migrants are a bigger source of foreign income than Overseas Development Assistance, constituting US$325 billion in 2010 versus US$127 billion recorded for Overseas Development Assistance.1 Movement of people towards and within ASEAN is significant: there were an estimated 6.7 million international migrants in this region in 2010, not to mention millions of internal migrants, who provide much needed remittance income for families in source countries where employment opportunities are limited or lesser remunerated.
The ATM Bulletin collection for 2011 – see you next year!
The Asian Trends Monitoring Bulletin will undertake an end of the year overhaul including a festive break and will resume active posting in the beginning of January. We can’t promise anything, but look out for a fresh design when we are back from the break!
In the meanwhile we would like to point your attention to our collection of past issues. For online reading just click on the covers in the bookshelf below, for offline reading go to the download section where you will also find PDF versions for download.
This year we covered pro-poor trends for information & communication technology, the ASEAN trade game, disaster risk reduction and recovery in communities in Aceh, the rice industry in Thailand and beyond, and the growing inequality in Asia (incl. 3 data posters) as well as innovative interventions against inequality. Just make your pick.
Happy festive period and a Happy New Year everyone!
Bulletin 13: Innovations against inequality
In the Asian Trends Monitoring (ATM) Bulletin 12: Rising Asia, Growing Inequalities, we highlighted some inequalities that still persist throughout ASEAN, despite rapid economic growth. This issue seeks to highlight several interventions developed to close these gaps. Moreover, the examples are meant to bring life to the numbers and illustrate a range of successful approaches in tackling the inequities highlighted.
The interventions we have chosen vary greatly in size and scope. This allows us not only to provide a clearer picture of the wide array of existing innovations and interventions, but also touch on the strengths and weaknesses that differentiate the efforts of governments from those of grassroots organisations.
Our first section discusses interventions in providing basic infrastructure. We showcase three examples of small-scale, market-driven interventions in the provision of water, rural electrification and clean cooking methods, as well as a broad overview of national-level approaches in rural electrification. We discuss why these small start-ups have enjoyed much success in filling the gaps that governments cannot reach
Bulletin 12: Rising Asia, Growing Inequalities
Asia is rising! Asia’s growth is now celebrated the world over, much of this focused on China and the phenomenal economic growth that over the last 30 years has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. But Asia is not China, and this remarkable transformation is not a ubiquitous story for all of Asia. While Southeast Asia has experienced its own economic miracles, the problems of endemic poverty, increasing divides between rural and urban communities, and absolute growth in economic inequalities, represent the dark shadow of Asia’s success that is too easily overlooked.
Asia is rising but not all Asians are enjoying this growth; many have realised only marginal improvements to their economic resilience, others have gone backwards, and still others now suffer an ever more precarious existence, shut out of any hope of accessing even the most basic of infrastructures. A deeper examination of the “rise of Asia” reveals growing gaps in access to basic financial, health, education, and social services, both across countries and within national borders. Despite Southeast Asia’s economic success, millions of its poor continue to exist in a parallel economy: a mass underclass of invisible urban and rural populations who are marginalised from the changing economic landscapes that so often make the media headlines each of us are familiar with.
Bulletin 11: Rice is life: Pro-poor initiatives in the rice industry
“Rice is life” in Asia and particularly Southeast Asia, where it has long been a staple crop that countries have relied on to feed booming populations. The region is a key rice producer, with 169 million tons ,which is about 26% of global rice production, being produced in 2008. Rice constitutes around 60% of daily calorie intake in Asia and millions of small-holder farmers and their families depend on rice for both income and food security. Small-holder farmers are the most at risk if any harvest fails, due to drought, flooding or market-induced shocks.
In this issue, we focus the spotlight on small-holder farmers living in poverty and innovative interventions at the grassroots level that improve their livelihoods. This issue of the Asian Trends Monitoring (ATM) Bulletin is based on primary interview material gathered during a fieldwork visit to Thailand in April 2011.
Bulletin 10: Aceh: Recovery and Reconstruction
The Asian Trends Monitoring (ATM) team recently traveled to Aceh, Indonesia, where the majority of losses from the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami had occurred. Six and a half years have passed and yet several hundred people still live in temporary housing, awaiting the relocation they were promised years ago. The ATM team sought to interview individuals from organisations that have been active in various facets of the region’s redevelopment to uncover the long-term challenges that disaster recovery professionals, government bodies and grassroots groups face. We hope that you will find their responses as illuminating as we have.
Readers will notice several key differences between this issue and previous issues. The team has set aside the customary focus on trade and investment facilitation, health systems and energy security to present a more holistic view of what is happening in Aceh. Before arriving in the province, the team contacted local and international NGOs that are engaged in a variety of sectors — including disaster preparedness, women’s rights education and waste management — and met with those who were available during our visit. The intent was therefore not to attempt a representative sample of all stakeholders, activities and opinions, but rather to showcase the diversity of community-driven development and act as a forum for grassroots groups. As such, the team was able to grant more space for voices from the ground so that readers can hear firsthand about their interventions and their reflections about the current state of affairs in Aceh. Hyperlinks for online audio and video recordings with various NGOs and community members have been inserted, where appropriate.
Bulletin 9: Welcome to the trade game
In this issue we look at the enduring problems surrounding trade, trade enhancement and facilitation, and the benefits and downsides of trade in the energy and health sectors.
While trade is often approached as a problem of inter-state politics and centred on multilateral and bilateral efforts to reduce tariffs and formal obstacles (quotas and non-tariff trade barriers) to trade, this issue highlights how the difficulties of deepening trade relations rest equally with informal barriers. Intra-state regional protectionism, poor infrastructure, or demands for informal payments, can all have a restrictive impact on the free movement of goods and services within economies. Indonesia, for example, lacks a national transportation system able to connect key economic centres, pushing up the cost of domestic shipping rates such that, in many instances, it is cheaper to import perishable goods from abroad rather than source them domestically.
