Environments Of The Poor In Southeast Asia East Asia And The Pacific

This book provides examples of possible triple-win solutions for simultaneously reducing poverty, raising the quality of the environment, and adapting to climate change. The book provides empirical evidence and observations from sixteen case studies in Southeast and East Asia, and from the Pacific. It argues that a spatial approach focussing on the environments in which the poor and vulnerable live, would trigger changes for development policies and implementation that better balance environmental and social concerns. In line with the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda, emphasizing integrated development approaches for the slum poor, the upland poor, the dryland poor, the coastal poor, and the flood-affected wetland poor, would also bring the environment and poverty agenda closer. The book emerged from a cooperation of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in partnership with experts from research institutes and think-tanks in the Asian region.

This publication reviews the economics of climate change in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. It confirms that the region is highly vulnerable to climate change, demonstrates that a wide range of adaptation measures are already being applied, and that it has great potential to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions globally. It shows that the cost to the region and globally of taking no early action against climate change far outweighs the cost of action. The publication urges Southeast Asia to play an important part in working toward a global solution to climate change, and to apply all feasible and economically viable adaptation and mitigation measures as key elements of poverty reduction and sustainable development strategies. It also argues that the current global economic crisis offers Southeast Asia an opportunity to start a transition towards a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy by introducing green stimulus programs that can simultaneously shore up economies, create jobs, reduce poverty, lower carbon emissions, and prepare for the worst effects of climate change.

This book started with an objective to understand the impact of high inflation on poverty and food security in Southeast Asia. However, the global economy moved quickly into recession in 2008. Anticipating that the impact of global recession would be more severe than that of high inflation in Southeast Asia, we re-focused the title of the book to Poverty, Food, and Global Recession in Southeast Asia. By early 2010, people were already optimistic that the global recession was over or would be over soon. However, the evidence was mounting that the poor had suffered and were still suffering from the current global crisis, even if the richer individuals may have recovered. Therefore, an important question arises, Is the crisis really over for the poor? This then became the sub-title of this book. This book aims to contribute a better understanding on poverty and food security in Southeast Asia during the recent global recession considering both recent developments and the previous major crisis of 1997-98.

This volume presents a variety of papers on issues related to growth, development and poverty prepared by specialists in their particular development-related fields. While the living standards of most people around the world have improved over time in absolute terms, many are still in desperate poverty. The major bulk of humanity lives in the continent of Asia, and it is here that some of the more spectacular contrasts in both economic growth and levels of affluence and destitution can be found. Whether India and China can continue to grow as fast as they have done in recent years remains to be seen. More importantly perhaps, whether growth alone can reduce poverty in these countries and in others is a question that needs to be discussed and understood. Outside of India and China, the African continent, particularly the nations in Sub-Saharan Africa is home to large numbers of poor and deprived humanity. Many of these countries are natural resource rich, but that has not enabled many of them to achieve adequate growth and reduce poverty. As countries grow, they put extra pressure on both global resources and the natural environment. The question as to whether there are finite limits to economic growth in a global sense is one that has long exercised thinkers. Technological progress has often enabled countries to economise on resource use without sacrificing growth. Whether that can continue indefinitely is also a question that has acquired a new urgency with the recent faster growth experience of the most populous countries.

"Overcoming environmental degradation is necessary if we are to reduce poverty. This is especially true in Asia and the Pacific, where two thirds of the world's poor live. Environmental degradation in the region is pervasive and it is accelerating. This publication provides an overview of poverty-environment interactions and presents some of these case studies and others that show how poor communities in Asia and the Pacific have sought to break out of poverty through local actions that improved their environment or made them less vulnerable to environmental stress."--Publisher website.

On 28-30 September 2009, the Asian Development Bank, the governments of the People's Republic of China and Viet Nam, and the ASEAN Secretariat jointly organized a high-level Asia-wide conference in Ha Noi on the social and environmental impact of the global economic crisis on Asia and the Pacific, especially on the poor and vulnerable. The conference also served as the 3rd China-ASEAN Forum on Social Development and Poverty Reduction and as the 4th ASEAN+3 High-Level Seminar on Poverty Reduction. It was supported by various development partners. This book features selected papers from the Ha Noi conference. It is designed with the needs of policy makers in mind, utilizing field, country, and thematic background studies to cover a large number of countries and cases.

This publication is the first Asia-Pacific report that comprehensively maps out the intersections between gender and environment at the levels of household, work, community and policy. It examines gender concerns in the spheres of food security, agriculture, energy, water, fisheries and forestry, and identifies strategic entry points for policy interventions. Based on a grounded study of the reality in the Asia-Pacific region, this report puts together good practices and policy lessons that could be capitalized by policymakers to advance the agenda of sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific.

All over Southeast Asia, rural communities are in transition to a sustainable status. This book explores how an environmentally fragile upland community in rural Philippines coped with and responded to economic and environmental tensions brought about by a globalized economy and decentralization. This in turn gave rise to local power especially in the management of natural resources.