Think regional and pay closer attention to agricultural productivity. These are some of the ways the Asia Pacific region can catch up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) over the next five years, according to a regional assessment presented Tuesday at the United Nations.
“With growth poles such as China and India, along with other economic powerhouses like Japan, a unified Asia-Pacific market could be the center of gravity of the world economy,” said the publication Paths to 2015, MDG Priorities in Asia and the Pacific.
The report is a joint undertaking of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap), which has been tracking MDG performance in the region for five years. The current report was prepared for the MDG Summit being held this week at the UN headquarters.
It said the Asia Pacific region has been slower than others in the world at regional economic integration, noting that it is better integrated with Europe and North America than internally. The region could fulfill its potentials better if it became a more integrated regional market, it said.
The report said moving forward on the East Asia Free Trade Agreement and the East Asia Summit would help in this regard. The East Asia Free Trade Agreement seeks to strengthen ties of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) with China, Japan and South Korea, also known as Asean+3. On the other hand, the East Asia Summit is an economic partnership framework that includes Asean+3, Australia, India and New Zealand in the market integration.
The Philippines is a founding member of the Asean, which now comprises 10 nations in Southeast Asia.
Boosting agricultural productivity is also needed in the region to cut poverty, the report said. It noted that governments in the Asia Pacific and international donors alike have been cutting back on agricultural investments over the past few decades, and that this has to change.
“The first priority is, therefore, to redirect attention to agriculture since many Asian countries have vast unexploited potential for agricultural growth,” it said.
This means more investments in agricultural research and extension, as well as adopting already available improved technologies to boost agricultural yield.
“The green revolution has run its course; new scientific breakthroughs, such as those in biotechnology, are now required to raise yield potentials. This is especially important because land and water are increasingly scarce in Asia and future agricultural growth will increasingly have to come from sustainable agriculture technology,” according to the report.
Currently, Asia Pacific was doing great at reducing poverty incidence in the region, the three multilaterals said. However, due to sheer population size — 60 percent of the world’s population live in the Asia Pacific — 947 million Asians continued to live in extreme poverty as of 2008 even if already 500 million had been spared since 1990. They said this was impressive because over the same period, the region’s population increased by some 800 million.
“This success has been a significant contributor to global progress on cutting poverty and means the region as a whole is making strong progress in halving the proportion of people living in poverty,” the UN said in a press statement Tuesday.
Summarizing the region’s performance based on the report, the UN statement said Asia Pacific has made strong progress in ensuring all children with primary school access and succeeded in cutting gender disparities in primary education, beginning to reduce HIV prevalence, reducing the use of ozone-depleting substances, and halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. The weak spots are in reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.
If no changes are made over the next five years, the Asia Pacific would have almost 35 million more people in extreme income poverty; about 900,000 more children suffering from malnutrition; 1.7 million births not attended by skilled professionals; and 70 million more people without access to improved sanitation, the UN statement said.
The report itself identified seven drivers for achieving the MDGs: strengthening growth by stimulating domestic demand and intra-regional trade; making economic growth more inclusive and sustainable; strengthening social protection; reducing persistent gender gaps; ensuring financial inclusion; supporting least developed and structurally disadvantaged countries; and exploiting the potential of regional economic integration. [PNA/Lara Jane M. Climaco]
