Millennium Development Goals Progress Report Lao Pdr 2008

Despite Asia’s rapid growth, vast sections of its population still live in poverty and suffer hunger and other forms of deprivation. Merely relying on Asia’s growth will not help the deprived see a better future in their lifetimes. Ways must be found to make growth more inclusive combined with proactive public action to bring substantial improvements in the lives of Asia’s deprived people. This book is written by a set of experts who have been working long on reducing various aspects of human deprivations in Asia. It begins with a discussion of the massive dimensions of deprivations that continue to exist in Asia. Although many countries have adopted inclusive growth strategies to enable the benefits of growth to reach the poor, much more needs to be done to make growth processes more broad based and beneficial to all. The book points to essential action needed to bring this about. The book also emphasizes the crucial role of determined, target driven public action if Asia’s deprived populations are to see substantial improvement in their lives. Practical measures to tackle problems of hunger, unemployment, gender discrimination, ill health, lack of quality basic education, inadequate access to clean water and basic sanitation are each discussed. The problems of the urban poor and migrants who continue to flock to Asia’s cities are also highlighted. The book also emphasizes the need for an appropriate environment for public action to succeed including strong participatory institutions, effective governance, social protection and regional cooperation.

This Annual Progress Report (APR) reviews the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). Noticeable improvements have also occurred in many economic, social, institutional, and legal development areas. While strengthening the management of the public sector and governance, the GoL is increasing public investment to develop physical and social infrastructure and promote human resources. The promotion of the private sector is receiving greater attention through significant improvements in the business climate and trade facilitation. Macroeconomic indicators are also evolving in a satisfactorily manner.

This independent Assessment of Development Results in Lao PDR, conducted by the Evaluation Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is part of a series of country-level evaluations. The evaluation examined the UNDP contribution to Lao PDR’s development from 2007 to 2010 and provides forward-looking recommendations that are useful for the formulation of the new UNDP country programme in Lao PDR.

​This Brief provides a cross-sectional analysis of development-directed investments in the wider Mekong region. The wider Mekong region includes Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and the Chinese province of Yunnan. Evidence highlights that a few critical dynamics, including human migration, natural resource flows, and financial investments, generate a high level of connectivity between these countries. Such high levels of connectivity increase complexity and the potential for ripple effects of national decisions. The emerging links between countries can unfold in financial investments, migration, or the flow of resources. As these links intensify the regional connectivity increases and over time a highly connected region can emerge, as experienced by the Mekong region.​ This Brief also contains a chapter at the end of the book featuring numerous charts and diagrams further illustrating the impact of development activities in the area.

Papua New Guinea is going through a crisis: A concentration on conventional approaches to development, including an unsustainable reliance on mining, forestry, and foreign aid, has contributed to the country’s slow decline since independence in 1975. Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development attempts to address problems and gaps in the literature on development and develop a new qualitative conception of community sustainability informed by substantial and innovative research in Papua New Guinea. In this context, sustainability is conceived in terms that include not just practices tied to economic development. It also informs questions of wellbeing and social integration, community-building, social support, and infrastructure renewal. In short, the concern with sustainability here entails undertaking an analysis of how communities are sustained through time, how they cohere and change, rather than being constrained within discourses and models of development. From another angle, this project presents an account of community sustainability detached from instrumental concerns with economic development. Contributors address questions such as: What are the stories and histories through which people respond to their nation’s development? What is the everyday social environment of groups living in highly diverse areas (migrant settlements, urban villages, remote communities)? They seek to contribute to a creative and dynamic grass-roots response to the demands of everyday life and local-global pressures. While the overdeveloped world faces an intersecting crisis created by global climate change and financial instability, Papua New Guinea, with all its difficulties, still has the basis for responding to this manifold predicament. Its secret lies in what has been seen as its weakness: underdeveloped economies and communities, where people still maintain sustainable relations to each other and the natural world.