Search

Southeast Asia is a development success story. By 2025, it is forecast that extreme poverty in the region will have been ‘eradicated’. Does this mean that the challenges so evident in the 1960s when the countries of the region began to pursue development have been met, and the objectives achieved? The paper makes a case for thinking afresh about development and the poverty project, recognising that development is never neatly achieved but, rather, re‐worked, re‐engineered and re‐imagined over time. This is done through identifying different categories of ‘poor’, each produced through different poverty‐making processes, measured and viewed in different ways, and their poverty addressed using different approaches and policies. With specific reference to the cases of Laos and Thailand, and drawing on longitudinal research in the latter country, it is argued that while economic growth does trickle down, it trickles down in quite discrete and often contingent ways. Furthermore, there is always development work to be done, because development creates its own work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Rural financial markets have grown rapidly in Asian emerging market economies, thus contributing to economic development and the reduction of poverty. At the same time, however, the level of indebtedness of rural households has increased, making households more vulnerable to shocks. One of the reasons for rising household debt is the ease of borrowing simultaneously from a growing number of lending institutions. This paper addresses two major questions. First, does borrowing from multiple sources increase rural households’ risk of over-indebtedness? Second, do over-indebted rural households refinance their outstanding loans through multiple borrowing, running the risk of becoming trapped in a debt cycle? Employing a dynamic random effects bivariate probit model for a unique set of longitudinal household panel data from Northeast Thailand, this study examines the bidirectional relationship between over-indebtedness and multiple borrowing to determine to what extent rural households become trapped in debt cycles. On the one hand, the results indicate that households in Northeast Thailand take on multiple loans, which further increases their risk of becoming over-indebted. On the other hand, our model results do not confirm the widespread notion that over-indebted rural households use multiple loans to refinance unpayable debts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burma's first well known welfare plan was entitled Pyidawtha or Happy Land, and it was launched in 1952. In vernacular terms, the literal meaning of Pyidawtha is 'Prosperous Royal Country'. The government's attempt to sustain tradition and culture and to instil modern aspirations in its citizens was reflected in its choice of the word Pyidawtha. The Plan failed and its implications still overshadow the development framework of Burma. This paper discusses how the country's major decisions, including whether or not to join the Commonwealth, have been influenced by language; how the term and concept of 'development' were conceived; how the Burmese translation was coined to attract public support; and how the detailed planning was presented to the masses by the government. The paper also discusses the concerns and anxieties of the democratic government led by U Nu in introducing Burma's first major development plan to a war-torn and bitterly divided country, and why it eventually failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an assessment of the mainstreaming of fisheries in national development plans and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers within the Asia-Pacific region. Fisheries and aquaculture in the region make a significant contribution to world fisheries production. Importantly, those directly involved in the sector are predominantly small-scale artisanal producers, a group traditionally regarded as extremely vulnerable in poverty terms. Therefore, mainstreaming - integrating a sector into every stage of the national policy process - may have important welfare implications for those drawing livelihoods from the industry. This paper examines the significance of fisheries and aquaculture to developing Asia-Pacific economies, and evaluates the extent to which the sector has been mainstreamed in national development and poverty reduction strategies using a content analysis framework. We conclude that the representation of fisheries issues, the recognition of sectoral poverty, policy responses, and stakeholder representation, is typically greater than in other fish producing regions, and there are many examples of best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that whilst wetlands deliver a wide range of services vital for human well-being, they are being rapidly degraded and lost. Losses tend to be higher where human populations are increasing most and demands for economic development are greatest. Multidisciplinary management approaches that integrate conservation and development objectives in wetlands are therefore urgently requested for by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. This paper describes the evaluation of 10 wetland management case studies from Asia, Africa and South America that adopted such an integrated approach. The evaluation assessed the outcomes of these integrated initiatives to identify conditions and processes for linking conservation and poverty reduction objectives in wetlands. The findings are also compared with other assessments of integrated approaches, particularly in terms of their effectiveness in optimizing conservation and poverty reduction outcomes. The results from our studies suggest an ongoing evolution of such integrated interventions, which also implies cycles of learning from past mistakes. Overall, our results highlight the significant variation between wetlands in types and quantities of services they provide and emphasize the need to view many ecological issues as social challenges for equitable solutions to both wetlands and people. The analysis further shows that the positive on-ground results owe much to the interdisciplinary problem analysis, whereby interventions can move from treating symptoms to addressing root causes. while no blueprint emerged on how to successfully integrate conservation and poverty reduction in wetlands, important lessons for future interventions were drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This paper estimates trends in absolute poverty in urban China using the Chinese Household Income Project surveys. Poverty incidence curves are plotted, showing lower poverty in 2002 than in 1988 irrespective of the poverty line chosen. Incomes of the poorest fell during 1988–95, contributing to a rise in inequality. However, inequality has been fairly constant thereafter. Models of the determination of income and poverty reveal widening differentials by education, sex, and Communist Party membership. Income from government anti-poverty programs has little impact on poverty, which has fallen almost entirely due to overall economic growth rather than redistribution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper is a summary and update, where feasible, of the United Nations first-ever report on The State of Asian Cities 2010/11. With 42% of its population in cities in 2010, Asia is urbanising rapidly; its cities are highly productive and generate an estimated 80% of the region’s GDP. Despite the sustained economic growth of Asian economies in the recent decades, urban poverty, inequality, slums, poor urban environmental quality and liveablity, worsening disaster risks and effects of climate change pose major development challenges. While decentralization has helped widen the scope of urban governance, greater attention is needed to enhancing transparency and accountability in decision-making, planning and governance of smaller cities and towns, infrastructure investments, and city-to-city learning. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]