【外交学者APAC 2020】THE BIG ISSUES（重大研究问题）

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Economic Development
原文链接：http://apac2020.the-diplomat.com/big-issues/economic-development/


The first decade of the new millennium clearly established the Asia-Pacific region’s potential to emerge as the centre of gravity for the world economy, with the rise of China and India creating new growth poles accounting for more than half of global incremental output in purchasing power parity terms.

The global financial and economic crisis of 2007/08 did disrupt the growth momentum in the region, with growth rates slowing in most economies and some economies contracting in 2009. However, with governments responding promptly and vigorously with countercyclical measures, signs of recovery have emerged and a V-shaped recovery in 2010 seems within the realm of possibilities.

However, there are a number of policy challenges that need to be responded to for sustaining the dynamism of the region in the coming decades.

Firstly, it is clear that even with recovery, demand in Western countries, especially the United States, will remain weak as they adjust to global imbalances by curbing credit-fuelled consumption through realignment of exchange rates or protectionism. Therefore, the Asia-Pacific region will need to develop new sources of growth to make up for the lost demand. The new engines include a rebalancing of the economies towards greater domestic and regional consumption. With 860 million poor people, the Asia-Pacific region has substantial headroom for adding millions of new consumers to create additional aggregate demand. Hence, poverty reduction strategies for narrowing development gaps between and within sub-regions, strengthening social protection and paying attention to agriculture, small and medium enterprises and rural development, strengthening financial inclusion and other initiatives should be front and centre of development policy.

Regional economic cooperation could be another aspect of rebalancing. Recognizing its potential, the Asia-Pacific region is moving towards integration with numerous bilateral and sub-regional free trade arrangements linking countries in its own version of a noodle-bowl. A new grouping of East Asia Summit was formed in 2005 as a forum of 16 Asia-Pacific economies and is seeking to create a Comprehensive Economic Partnership of East Asia (CEPEA) bringing together economic powerhouses such as Japan, China and India along with the ASEAN economies. Creation of a larger unified market in the Asia-Pacific region, coupled with improved connectivity and trade and investment facilitation, will create new sources of growth.

Finally, there are substantial unexploited opportunities for monetary and financial cooperation in the region. A broader and comprehensive institutional architecture is needed for assisting Asia-Pacific not only in crisis prevention but also in intermediating between region’s excess savings and growing investment gaps, which should help to narrow development gaps while generating new aggregate demand. Such architecture could also assist in exchange rate cooperation and the management of capital flows that are bringing with them volatility in emerging economies and help develop an Asian perspective on reform of the international financial architecture.

Hopefully these challenges will be addressed in earnest by the region’s leadership to enable them to pave the way for making the 21st Century truly Asia’s Century!

作者：

Dr. Nagesh Kumar
电邮：nkumar@un.org
简介:Nagesh Kumar is Chief Economist of UN-ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific), Bangkok. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.
详细介绍：http://www.ris.org.in/Director-General.htm

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Environment
原文链接：http://apac2020.the-diplomat.com/big-issues/environment/


Environmental issues will become key drivers of public and private decisions across a broad range of sectors in the coming decade. The most prominent and politically sensitive of these will be climate change, with Asia set to become the global focus of climate action by 2020.

Two aspects of climate policy will assume pervasive influence. In rapidly industrializing and economically developed nations, climate mitigation (i.e. reducing greenhouse gas emissions) will increasingly affect technology and investment choices, as well as political and financial risk assessment in energy, transport, construction, manufacturing and international relations. In the poorer and less developed countries, adaptation to inevitable climate impacts will emerge routinely on the agendas of economic planning, agriculture and rural development, as well as natural resource management, natural disaster management and risk reduction. Infrastructure technologies and design will begin to shift substantially to accommodate higher climate uncertainties and lower carbon emissions. Public agencies and businesses across the region, meanwhile, will stretch to grasp a whole new lexicon of concepts, tools and practices that are still emerging.

Despite China and India’s diplomatic victory at Copenhagen in 2009, essentially defining the global climate issue on their own terms and vetoing emission targets on the basis of the ‘right to develop,’ both countries will face increased pressure to manage greenhouse gas emissions. That pressure will begin to come from bankers, investors and marketers who are wary of international regulatory or consumer backlash. But both countries will succeed in leveraging their high emissions profile and low-income status into favourable international technology transfer agreements.

The coming decade will see explosive growth of new businesses based on massive investments in clean technologies. China will devote enormous amounts of state funding to technology change, particularly in the energy sector. The country will eventually accept international emission targets because of the huge sums available through emissions trading to modernize and clean up their dirty coal industry.

But in the poorer countries of Asia, there will be mounting concern with drought, more frequent and intense storms and sea level rise. Governments and international organizations will invest more in research on crop varieties resistant to drought, or to spreading disease and pests, and will improve services to help small farmers adopt new approaches. Irrigation systems will be re-engineered. Agricultural risks will increase, threatening the gains made in recent years by the region’s poor farmers. Dawning recognition of the future need to relocate millions from vulnerable coastal areas will affect long-term development and infrastructure planning.

Governments will be challenged to devise policy incentives for investment in clean technologies, in applied research for agriculture and climate adaptation and for regional sharing of climate information, technical innovation and investment. If they fail, environmental change is likely to increase disparities and deepen political tensions both within and between nations in the region.

作者：
Stephen Tyler
简介：Stephen Tyler is President of Adaptive Resource Management Ltd in Victoria, B.C., Canada. He is also Senior Associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) in Canada and the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET) in Boulder, Colorado. He has worked on environmental policy and resource management issues in Asia for over 20 years, and serves as adjunct Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Victoria.

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Water Security
原文链接：http://apac2020.the-diplomat.com/big-issues/water-security-in-asia/


As the economic success of many Asian nations is celebrated worldwide, the most fundamental resource for human survival–water–deserves immediate attention. In November 2008, the US National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2025 report highlighted the significance of water scarcity on the world’s largest continent as follows: ‘With water becoming more scarce in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to become more difficult within and between states.’

Scarcity as a result of land degradation is of great concern across Asia, but its linkage to food security is perhaps most acute in China and India. The secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification estimates that some 27 percent of China‘s land mass is desertified, with an average of 2,460 square kilometres of land being lost to advancing deserts each year. Nearly 400 million people live in these areas, and the economic loss to China has been estimated at around $6.5 billion a year. Central Asia is rich in water resources, but more than 90 percent of the water in this vast region is concentrated in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Given such major disparities between countries, a regional approach to water security is essential and requires better and more secure diplomatic relations between countries of the continent.

With the support of the Asian Development Bank, an ‘Asia Pacific Water Forum’ has been established that commissioned an Asian Water Development Outlook in 2007. Such efforts are laudable but have limited influence on global institutions because they are often perceived as background technocratic documents rather than as clear policy prescriptive materials. In order to have a tangible impact on the planning horizon for water-related security issues, it is essential for world leaders to be engaged at the highest level of security discourse. Riparian agreements that worked in the past, such as the Indus Waters Treaty, between India and Pakistan, are being tested as scarcity increases.

Although home to more than half of the human population, Asia has less fresh water–3,920 cubic meters per person–than any continent. Almost two-thirds of global population growth is occurring in Asia, which is expected to grow by nearly 500 million within the next 10 years, mostly in urban areas. Asia’s rural population will remain almost stationary between now and 2025, but the urban population is likely to increase by 60 percent. The pressures on Asian water resources will be unprecedented and a clear strategy for dealing with these challenges is needed at multiple levels. Building infrastructure to harness water most efficiently should be a priority, but this must also be coupled with improving the governance regimes of existing water resources in rivers, lakes and aquifers. Creative diplomacy to manage these inherently trans-boundary resources must be proactively pursued to prevent adverse impacts on development indicators and a rise in regional conflicts.

作者：

Saleem H. Ali
电邮：Email: saleem@alum.mit.edu
详细简介：http://www.uvm.edu/~shali/

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Terrorism
原文链接：http://apac2020.the-diplomat.com/big-issues/terrorism/


Asia is the emerging epicentre of global terrorism, replacing the Middle East as the key breeding ground for terrorist operatives and supporters. Since the US-led intervention in Afghanistan nearly a decade ago, al-Qaeda and its associated groups–notably the Taliban–have survived and revived.

The Pakistani Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA), separating the rest of Pakistan from Afghanistan, has become the central theatre of operations and unless governments sincerely and seriously work together and share expertise and resources, the spectre of terrorism is likely to grow in South Asia and could even spill over to East Asia in the coming decade.

Pakistan faces the biggest threat in the region. While tribal Pakistan faces the most severe and sustained challenges, the Pakistani mainland is also threatened. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban operating out of FATA have reached out, percolating their ideologies to other groups, including attacking Western targets in Mumbai in November 2008.

While Southeast Asian groups traditionally looked towards their Middle Eastern counterparts for inspiration and funding, groups in Asia are increasingly looking towards Pakistan, especially where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are located. In addition to seeking the blessing of al-Qaeda, their perceived vanguard, they also receive training and operational guidance there.

In Southeast Asia, concerted efforts have reduced terrorism significantly. Nonetheless, prolonged conflict zones in Southern Thailand, Southern Philippines, and Eastern Indonesia produce the conditions for local groups to spawn and foreign groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah to establish a presence.

Since 9/11, governments throughout Asia have increased efforts to track, catch or kill active terrorists. However, they lack both the legal structures and the platforms to counter extremist ideologies. Governments must understand that a cleric that preaches moderate views is as important as a law enforcement or intelligence counter-terrorism officer in combating religious terrorism. Unless governments in Asia build platforms to counter ideological extremism — the precursor to terrorism — the region is likely to face a long-term threat.

If the current pace of radicalization and operational action continues in the coming decade, we are likely to witness four trends.
• First, the spread and dominance of al-Qaeda’s global jihad ideology across Asia.
• Second, groups are likely to collaborate more by sharing expertise and resources.
• Third, the greater threat is not from operational contact but from ideological radicalisation, especially of Muslim communities throughout Asia.
• Fourth, more groups will conduct suicide attacks. And instead of conducting a large number of small scale attacks, these groups are likely to mount fewer medium to large scale attacks.

To reverse this course, governments throughout Asia should develop a multidimensional, multinational and multijurisdictional approach. They should work together to build common databases, exchange personnel and conduct joint training and joint operations to defeat the common threat of terrorism.

作者：

Rohan Gunaratna
国籍：新加坡
简介：Rohan Gunaratna is Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research and Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of the international bestseller ‘Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror,’ published by Columbia University Press.
详细介绍：http://www.rsis.edu.sg/about_rsis/staff_profiles/Rohan_Gunaratna.html

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Migration
原文链接：http://apac2020.the-diplomat.com/big-issues/migration-issues-and-challenges-in-asia/


In 2005 there were 191 million international migrants, of whom 90 percent were migrant workers and their families. Of these, 25 million were in Asia. Immigration is a contentious issue, particularly in Western democracies, but also in Asia, and managing the effects of migration will remain a major challenge for most nations over the next decade. Currently, the Guest Worker Program is seen by some as the best future solution for filling labour market gaps. However, the contracts offered to foreign workers are typically short-term, and include a range of restrictions. These stipulations often include that the majority of workers are not permitted to seek employment elsewhere, cannot bring their families with them and cannot settle in the host country, meaning they must return to their home state on completing their contract. Still, in some countries highly-skilled workers are being increasingly recruited on the promise that they will be able to qualify for citizenship status.

In the past, migration movements in Asia were intra-continental and made up of mostly Chinese and Indian workers moving to Southeast Asia. Most migrants were males who worked in the plantation and mining sectors and female migration was largely associational or limited. But since the 1990s, international labour migration is occurring on a much greater scale than before. It’s now trans-continental as well as intra-continental and includes a larger range of groups with economic and labour market segments, rather than national economies, attracting both male and female migrants. In labour-sending countries, the state is often now more involved in developing policies and programs to facilitate migration and reduce transaction costs associated with remittance transfers. The memorandum of understanding, a document similar to a contract that describes bilateral or multilateral agreements between parties, has therefore become an important instrument for helping manage and regulate foreign worker recruitment.

Another important change has been the feminization of migration. The gendering of migration is connected with emerging gender-selective policies of the labour-importing countries and the development of gender-specific employment markets. In particular, care-giving demands are both being generated and met through migrant women’s employment, underscoring the complex causal relations that bind migration, gendered labour and care-giving regimes. Many female domestic workers work under unregulated conditions where they are exploited and often abused, and it’s often being left to human rights groups to seek justice for them.

Government officials, intermediaries and brokers who steer migrants across borders have also begun increasing costs for them, resulting in increasing levels of irregular migration and human trafficking. Thus, effective governance of migration is currently more dependent on global governance, interstate cooperation and transnational networks than individual states.

作者：

Amarjit Kaur（美国）
电邮:  akaur@une.edu.au
电话:  02 6773 2874 (或+61 2 6773 2874 overseas)
传真:  02 6773 3596
简介:Amarjit Kaur, FASSA, is a Professor of Economic History at the School of Business, Economics and Public Policy, University of New England in Armidale Australia.
详细介绍：http://www.une.edu.au/staff/akaur.php

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Energy
原文链接：http://apac2020.the-diplomat.com/big-issues/asias-challenging-energy-future/


The stunning recent rise in oil and energy prices has catapulted energy to near the top of the economic and security agendas from Beijing to Tokyo to New Delhi and Seoul. Although prices have declined, energy remains critical to the future economic prospects of every country in the region. Asia’s explosive energy demand growth over the next decade, especially in China, is likely to intensify a series of critical and growing energy challenges.

Asia faces three inter-related energy dilemmas. First, governments will face a serious challenge just to meet the enormous scale of rising energy needs. Over the past decade, Asia accounted for two-thirds of the entire global rise in energy demand, one half of oil demand growth, and all of world coal demand growth. China’s energy demands alone more than doubled. The result was frequent shortages of electricity, coal, and petrol, most pronounced in China, India and developing Asia, as countries struggled to keep up with demand. Energy demand is expected to double again over the next decade, which will require massive new investment to prevent energy from becoming a serious bottleneck to economic growth, particularly in China and India.

Second, energy security has become a critical challenge. Booming demand, high oil prices, and fears over access to future oil supplies from unstable regions have driven energy security to the top of the strategic agenda. China’s oil demand doubled over the past decade and it now imports 50% of its total oil needs. India is over 70% import dependent, while Japan and Korea remain 100% import dependent for both oil and natural gas. Fears over uncertain future supplies has led to a toxic nationalistic competition among China, Japan, India, and Korea to gain control over new oil supplies around the world that has aggravated key regional geopolitical rivalries.

Third, mushrooming energy demand will make Asia’s severe air pollution and rising greenhouse gas emissions critical challenges to manage. The region’s legendary air pollution continues to worsen due to massive coal use and a boom in motorization in China and India. Pollution has become a critical social issue in China’s big cities, one which Beijing can no longer ignore. Asia also is expected to account for two-thirds of the global rise in carbon emissions over the next 20 years; China alone is likely to account for over one-half. Hence, Asia and China are now at the center of the debate over climate change as demonstrated by the recent Copenhagen meeting. China, India, and the rest of Asia will face serious challenges in reducing the growth in carbon emissions while maintaining high economic growth.

作者：

Mikkal E. Herberg
头衔：Research Director, Energy Security Program
简介：Mikkal E. Herberg is the BP Foundation Senior Research Fellow on International Energy at the Pacific Council on International Policy.
详细介绍http://www.chinafaqs.org/expert/mikkal-herberg

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