Asia-Pacific remains the anchor
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E-mail Beijing Review, May 29, 2012
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Amitava Mukherjee |
The Earth Summit will be held next month in Brazil with a focus on green economy and sustainable development. How can the Asia-Pacific region contribute to these goals?
I would like to highlight certain things which are not usually highlighted. One of the best ways that the Asia-Pacific region can contribute to green economy and sustainable development is to control population. Rapidly rising population is inimical to sustainable development. If you have too many people to feed, there are more difficulties. More people mean more demand on natural resources, more demand on financial resources, more demand on institutional resources and more demand on physical resources. In countries like India and Bangladesh, their fertility rates are high. Population growth in Pakistan is also high.
The second thing to do is to reduce poverty. Poor people are forced to encroach on marginal lands. They are forced to encroach on marginal bodies of water. They are forced to use up the natural microenvironment. They have no options. It is a matter of life and death. If we reduce poverty, we will significantly contribute to sustainable development. Then poor people will not make a demand on marginal resources, marginal land and marginal bodies of water.
The third significant contribution is promoting technologies that are less polluting. We not only need to develop technologies that are less polluting but also need to find out reasonable ways that the technologies are transferred to developing countries that cannot afford high-cost technologies. One of the significant ways we can manage sustainable development is to manage urbanization. Urbanization is high in the Asia-Pacific region. A lot of people are moving to urban sectors. If we do not have an orderly urbanization, we will see pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and bad waste management.
What implications do you think the ongoing shift of China's economic development pattern will have for the Asia-Pacific region and beyond?
There are two aspects. One is China's development pattern promotes intra-regional trade that will benefit a lot of countries in the Asia-Pacific. China is already doing it well. China is restructuring its economy to be based on domestic demand.
Secondly, by restructuring its economy, China can grow faster. China can contribute significantly to the development of other smaller countries that are dependent on China. For instance, it can have more official development assistance for Laos, Cambodia and Mongolia. The ongoing shift of China's economic development pattern will have a significant impact on these countries.
It will also have a significant impact on other countries. If China produces more goods and services, China's external demand will be reduced. It can meet more self-needs from domestic production. If it produces most of the things it uses domestically, international demand for those goods and services will come down. If Chinese demand comes down, the international prices will come down. That has a very significant implication for the world.
Can you tell us how decisions are made at ESCAP and how its policies have affected the Asia-Pacific region?
The decisions of ESCAP are made in a democratic manner. There is an Advisory Committee of Permanent Representatives. Each country in the region has a permanent representative in ESCAP. They advise the UN under secretary general for ESCAP on what to do, how to do it and what not to do. That is one decision-making body. Then, we have committees. The committees deal with issues, such as poverty, statistics and trade and investment. They help the under secretary general decide which areas ESCAP should work on. And there are commission sessions by ministers and prime ministers. They come and debate on different issues and come to conclusions on what to do or what not to do.
For instance, UN Under Secretary General and ESCAP Executive Secretary Noeleen Heyze is proactive in going into Myanmar and trying to influence them. I don't say ESCAP alone has been in charge of changing Myanmar, but it has been a significant player in the process. ESCAP established the Asian Development Bank in the 1960s. It also developed the Asian Highway network and the Trans-Asian Railway network. More significantly, we have tried to standardize the road systems and help the developing countries to update their transportation systems.
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