CARUM EVENT
Authors’ Workshop @ Dili
Poverty and Inequality in Southeast Asia: Mainstreaming Sustainable Development Goals

Poverty and Inequality in Southeast Asia: Mainstreaming Sustainable Development Goals

Editors: Rajah Rasiah, Joao Saldanha, Sharifah Muhairah and Zhang Miao

 

The Asia-Europe Institute with the Centre for ASEAN Regionalism (CARUM) as the initiating anchor successfully obtained funding from the Open Society Foundation (OSF) to publish four books on Southeast Asia highlighting critical aspects of the economies of each of the countries that constitute the sub-continent. With a focus on understanding the dynamics of development in Southeast Asia, the fourth a series of research-based books launched by the Centre for ASEAN Regionalism that is targeted at understanding the state, the key pillars of poverty alleviation, including government policies, and the future of the nations’ on addressing poverty and inequality in the subcontinent. The papers for the workshop in Dili seek to unravel the state and direction taken by the Southeast Asian countries in their efforts to achieving the 2016 United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The key SDGs to focus on are SDG 1 (Alleviating poverty) and SDG2 (Ending hunger). Also important are SDGs 7, 8, 9 and 13 as they help raise productivity, ease work through digitalization, and strengthen climate resilience to protect the poor from global warming calamities.

Southeast Asia has its own unique indigenous peoples that make the region distinctive. The historical roots of Southeast Asia can be traced to sedentary agriculture with the early Indianization that still shows the remains of magnificent temples still visible in the region. Indian and Southeast Asian relations began in prehistoric times and continued until Western colonialism was established from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The contemporary nations of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste (East Timor), the Philippines and Vietnam historically encompass a region strongly influenced by Indian, Chinese, Islamic and European civilizations. The Portuguese and Spanish were the first to colonize Southeast Asia as spices where Christianity dominated their early focus. With the exception of Thailand, all other Southeast Asian nations came under colonial rule from the 16th century starting with the Philippines by the Spanish. Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country that did not undergo a direct colonization experience. Nevertheless, sedentary agriculture and fishing dominated the economies of these countries until colonial interest resulted in the introduction of mining, cash crop production, and plantation agriculture. In fact, at the time of independence after the Second World War, Southeast Asia was ideologically divided with the allies seeking to retain the individual nations within the free world. Following independence from France in 1954, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and following independence from Britain in 1948, were increasingly disengaged from the free world. While American attempts to prevent the spread of communism in Indonesia, and the military Junta in Myanmar staying closed, ASEAN existed in its early years until 1992 but was limited to the free world economies of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Brunei.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was founded when the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand signed the ASEAN declaration on August 8, 1967 in Bangkok. The initiatives towards the formation of ASEAN started originally when the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) was founded in 1954 and subsequently the Association of Southeast Asia in 1961. The early engagement of ASEAN gained importance owing to the Vietnam war, which lasted from 1955 until 1975. ASEAN’s first summit meeting took place in Bali after the Vetnam war in 1976, which resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. Subsequent initiatives include the triangular economic development iniated by Singapore, and the founding of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) in 1992. The adoption of the ASEAN Charter in 2007 provided the legal and institutional framework for its three core pillars, i.e., the ASEAN Economic Community, the ASEAN Political-Security Community, and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. The end of the Cold War as President Gorbachev brought about the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991 attracted stronger initiatives to raise regional integration among the ASEAN nations with Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia transiting to join ASEAN. AFTA subsequently evolved into the implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015. In this context, Timor-Leste is still seeking political stability to pursue similar development goals. We are expecting the entry of Timor-Leste as the 11th member in 2025. The country was part of the ASEAN when the country was a part of Indonesia earlier.

Key areas of focus covered in this workshop include the causes of poverty, the relationship between economic development and poverty alleviation, the importance of export-orientation and worker incomes, the role of foreign aid on education and job creation. In doing so the workshop shall discuss the efficacy of earlier debates on poverty and inequality, including the inverted “U” shaped curve between economic growth and income inequality, as well as the recent debates by Megnad Desai’s emphasis on human development, Amartya’s concept of freedom and capability, and the Oxford University’s use of the multi-dimensional poverty index. Also emphasized will be the traditional measures of labour productivity, export-orientation, the importance of digitalization and climate resilience on poverty, and the proliferation of smart technologies in improving worker incomes. Given the critical importance of food production to reduce dependence on imports, food security is a major topic addressed by all the chapters. The evidence is clear that small city states and nations, such as Singapore and Brunei, and countries still grappling with low incomes, such as Cambodia, Lao PDR, and Myanmar have increased emphasis on smart farming to raise productivity and reduce reliance on imports. Timor-Leste, the newest country in Southeast Asia has much to learn drive poverty alleviation.

Sector-wise, as medium and large economies, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia exhibit a wide range of agriculture, sedentary, small scale, and large-scale farming with strong implications for employment creation and poverty alleviation. Indonesia Malaysia, and Thailand show heavy dominance of large-scale plantation agriculture with strong specialization in oil palm and rubber cultivation. Agricultural parastatals have been important in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to support small farmers, though small-scale farming is important especially to support rural households in all countries, except for Singapore where farming has focused increasingly on high yielding crops that show high returns. All countries in Southeast Asia have supplied to the United Nations Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) developed intended national determined contribution (INDC) disclosing their timelines to achieve carbon net zero emissions. Initiatives have also been taken by these countries to strengthen climate resilience and digitalization to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development goals (SDGs), including at alleviating poverty.

Food security has long been acknowledged as a key pillar of poverty. Given the infancy of the new approaches undertaken by the Southeast Asian economies, there is still much room to achieve food self-sufficiency and overall agricultural sustainability. All countries have sought smartification initiatives to raise agricultural productivity, but the emphasis has been stronger in Singapore and Brunei, both of which face serious shortage in farm acreage and facing massive imports. Timor-Leste is also a small country but is presently lacking a focused approach to establishing economic strategies.

While bringing together the state of agriculture in Southeast Asia by individual countries and focused on screening the strategies taken by governments to raise agricultural productivity, exports, and self-sufficiency rates, the book also examines the efforts taken by these countries to achieve the United Nations’ SDGs in general, and to alleviate poverty and promote climate resilience in particular. In doing so, the chapters deal with the reality facing agriculture in these countries, i.e., urbanization and industrialization that have increasingly squeezed agriculture thereby rapidly lowering the acreage enjoyed by the sector. While the intensity has varied, all countries in the sub-continent have responded in varying scales to promote small-scale, intensive farming through the introduction of smart technologies.

The papers are targeted at a book publication that will be edited by Rajah Rasiah, Joao Saldanha, Sharifah Muhairah, and Zhang Miao. We take this opportunity to first and foremost thank the Open Society Foundation (OSF) for generously funding the flights of all participants to the book workshop in Dili from April 10 till April 13, 2025. Special thanks to Premesh Chandran, Agantaranansa Juanda, and Sophia Hurtado Epstein from OSF for taking the lead to support the workshop. Special thanks also go to Joao Saldanha University of Timor Leste for agreeing to be the host for this workshop, and the Malaysian Embassy in Dili for generously agreeing to support the domestic costs in Dili. We wish to also thank the following officials for assisting with the logistics involved for holding the workshop, i.e., Kevin Fernandez, Adil Johan, Putri Harlinda, Marsha Prema Priya, Ummi Afiqah, Zahadin Omar, and Noraerna Abdul Rahim.