The Asian Trends Monitoring Project
In 2009, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) was awarded a project in response to a call for a grant application to the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), a pioneer at the frontier of global philanthropy that identifies and supports solutions to many of the world’s most difficult challenges. In the grant call, the Rockefeller Foundation, which works around the world to expand opportunities for poor or vulnerable people and to help ensure that globalization’s benefits are shared more equitably, mentioned critical issues of particular interest to include health systems, climate change adaptation, urbanization, economic insecurity, and basic survival needs.
Anticipating and tracking long-term trends and novel research results is a critical component to understanding the future of development and poverty, through which the RF research team, in collaboration with its regional offices in Africa and Asia, established a broad, forward-looking searchlight function involving regionally-focused horizon scanning and trend monitoring grantees.
Context for Research
The team from the LKYSPP consisting of Professors Daryl Jarvis, Kai Hong Phua and Benjamin Sovacool, was selected as the successful grantee with proven experience conducting cross-cutting, trend scanning at the intersection of multiple topics and relevant issues for scanning that include, but are not limited to: poverty, health systems, environmental degradation, climate change, trade, conflict, urbanization, economic insecurity, migration, and basic survival needs.
Grantees were expected to monitor secondary sources in their regions - including academic journals, newsletters, think tank reports, conference proceedings, newspapers, magazines, grey literature, and activities occurring in their own networks - and aggregate this trend analysis information into periodic newsletters for distribution on a regular basis to the Foundation and to the wider research, non-profit, and policymaking community.
The research grant was awarded based upon the reputation of the organization and its horizon scanning expertise and experience in analysing development issues. Grantees were requested to describe their methodological approach, potential plan of action, and interest in the topics and to address how this work enriched ongoing activities at their organization and samples of their horizon scanning/trend monitoring written outputs together with a list of collaborating institutions.
The criteria for selection included among others: demonstrated capacity to the conduct horizon scanning research in the developing world; reflecting a forward-looking interest in development, poverty, and global issues; ability to take a regional perspective on these issues of interest; a generalist and integrated approach to tracking trends, research results and topics; and reliability in creating and transferring high-quality scanning products.
Initial Research (Dec 2009 – Dec 2011)
The initial research proposed to monitor general economic, social and political trends through the integration of three leading policy areas in Southeast Asia: 1) Trade and Investment; 2) Health Systems; and 3) Energy Security. These three areas represent key issues of public policy concern intimately associated with Southeast Asia’s future growth, economic security, and poverty alleviation. In the latter phase of the project, there would be greater integration of these three areas into trans-disciplinary themes that will translate development policy trends and issues into concrete policy implications and options for action. Attention would also focus on new bottom-up innovations involving civil society and public-private sector participation.
Each trend analysis would be presented through integrated themes and deliverables through the Asian Trends Monitoring Bulletins geared toward the identification of emerging ideas, changing and evolving coalitions and constituencies that impact thought leadership, the framing of debates and agenda setting and in turn, the implications for policy development and future policy directions. The primary objective of the exercise would be to interpret and explore critically the implications of emergent trends for poverty alleviation and development; in particular, analysing their consequences for marginal populations and populations at risk. The analytical dimensions of the project thus has a ‘pro-poor’ focus designed to help governments, donors and civil society groups understand and anticipate emergent policy directions and their implications for poverty alleviation.
The ATM bulletins were structured to produce outputs in terms of the following:
i. Illuminate the current contextual environment (problem identification and key drivers)
ii. Identify signals, sector trends, and possible long term implications for poor and marginal communities (emergent risks, sector trajectories and possible scenarios, emergent sector drivers and change agents)
iii. Stress test signals and sector trends with critical analysis, dissenting voices, expert opinions
iv. Identify potential solutions and intervention opportunities (map intervention scenarios, possible programs, likely impact)
Economic Trends in Trade and Investment
Trade and investment have historically been the life blood of Southeast Asia’s economies. Poverty alleviation, the development and growth of formal sectors in the region’s economies, employment, literacy, technology transfer and skills attainment, are positively correlated with increasing trade and investment flows. By one estimate, for example, trade and investment have been the two most important contributors to Southeast Asia’s economic welfare and, in turn, the increasing social and political stability many of its nations now enjoy. Monitoring trends in those factors that facilitate or hinder trade and investment, their patterns, trajectories and volumes, may thus be the single most important indicator of Asia’s future well-being.
Trade and investment flows grow out of a series of formal and informal practices. On the formal side, bilateral (government-to-government) and multilateral treaties (World Trade Organization, ASEAN) provide formal-legal frameworks for trade and investment facilitation. By themselves, however, such frameworks only provide a limited (albeit important) mechanism for trade and investment promotion. Equally important are the sub-national (often provincial) practices that inform the regulatory regime that governs trade and investment in specific geographic locales and economic sectors. Compliance and licensing requirements, customs inspection and border practices, joint venture or limited equity holding restrictions, or the rules governing access to domestic capital, among others, constitute the broader domestic regime that frequently creates informal barriers to entry, operational bottlenecks, and increased operating costs, thus adversely impacting or restricting trade and investment flows.
The focus of the ATM Bulletins would be to ascertain trends in these areas as a leading indicator of future trade and investment patterns and the broader series of issues around which bilateral and multilateral trade and investment negotiations will likely converge. Issue identification and grey literature scanning of key policy speeches, trade and ministerial meetings, multilateral investment and trade forums (ASEAN, APEC), customs and customs inspection coordination, technical assistance programs for customs and cross-border inspection regimes (ASEAN – EU), negotiations around customs standardization, as well as the emergent debates focused on trade in services (an otherwise key driver of emergent trade negotiations in Asia) will all be monitored and analysed for their implications for investment and trade liberalization and in turn, their implications for poverty alleviation and development.
While the ATM Bulletin has thus concentrated previously on the more formal, national, bilateral and multilateral processes designed to facilitate trade and investment in the region, going forward we envisage an increasing focus on the micro and contextual practices around trade and investment at the local level. In recent issues of the ATM Bulletin, for example, we have sharpened out analytical focus to explore local bottlenecks, obstacles, and practices that limit trade enhancement, in turn exploring how these represent increasing opportunity costs for rural communities, hider engagement in the formal sector of economies, and reduce the economic resilience of marginal communities. We intend to deepen our analysis using this focal plane and explore practical, grass-roots strategies for enhancement of trade and investment into communities where growth, and the benefits of development, is still only marginally experienced.
Thus the principal analytical tasks in this project of trend monitoring of trade and investment facilitation will be to a). Identify, analyse and distil the key drivers shaping trade and investment policy in Asia at the micro-local level; b). Identify obstacles or critical junctures impairing trade and investment liberalization at the micro-local level; and c). Identify critical issue areas where proactive engagement can impact positively trade and investment facilitation and thus deliver material benefits for poor and marginal populations in Asia.
Social Trends in Health Systems
In recent years, the Southeast Asian countries have experienced rapid economic growth and social development. Rising incomes have led to increasing utilization of healthcare as well as higher expectations of the quality of care. Improvements in life expectancy coupled with decreasing fertility have given rise to ageing populations, along with a greater proportion of chronic degenerative diseases, for which healthcare is often long-term and costly. New specialized technology, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals likewise, contribute to the upward spiral in healthcare costs. Governments responded to these trends by seeking additional sources of healthcare financing, such as expanding social health insurance systems, restructuring public medical care, and expanding the role of the private sector. The health sector has undergone continuing reforms that included decentralization and devolution, establishing internal markets, corporatizing hospitals, and contracting out services to private corporations. The rationale for reforms was usually premised on the depletion of limited public funds, the objectives to achieve greater efficiency or sustainability, and the desirability of consumer choice and competition among providers. However, these attempts at privatization have been heavily contested in policy debates on the grounds of market failures in healthcare and perceived inequity, and have led to mixed results, except in cases where governments have reasserted a strong stewardship role in ensuring a level playing field and goodgovernance in the public-private mix. Thus there are potential policy lessons from regional experiences to contribute to the knowledge of innovative practices in the delivery, financing and regulation of health systems.
The past Asian and global fiscal crises, coupled with the emergence of new infectious diseases and the prospects of regional pandemics, have thrown the vulnerabilities of many healthcare systems into sharp relief. What are the regional lessons and what would be the health impact of the economic crisis, especially on vulnerable population groups like the poor, unemployed, children and the elderly? With future prospects of trade further opening up, healthcare markets in both private and public sectors in these countries will be subjected to more competition arising from medical tourism and growth of the biomedical industry. It is timely to take stock and monitor the trends and issues in healthcare systems around the region and to identify from a comparative perspective, the challenges that have arisen with changing social, economic and political conditions, and the ways in which governments are responding to these challenges. In this regard, it would be important to examine the changing roles concerning the interface between the public, private and voluntary sectors, the extent of public-private participation in health care in the different countries towards balancing the objectives of socio-economic development, and their implications in terms of differential access, quality and affordability to the population.
The project attempted to systematically collect, collate and review data from a representative cross-section of health systems in the ASEAN region in order: 1) to monitor regional experiences and identify key trends of on-going health challenges; 2) to conduct comparative analysis of health systems responses in the region; and 3) to provide lessons and implications to inform wider policy debates regarding sustainable health systems development and health services to poor and vulnerable populations. The process would involve regular scanning of all available data of regional health and country health systems from the following - media, internet and library sources; health and health-related agencies covering the public, private and voluntary sectors, including programs of international organizations such as WHO, World Bank and UNESCAP; and major public health meetings and reports of key health policy speeches and health systems research within the region.
In the immediate future, the health systems component would be coveringgrowing areas such as ASEAN Health Governance, Growth of the Biomedical Industries and New Health Technological Developments, Population Ageing and the Rise of Chronic Diseasesin Asia. There would be emphasis on Asian contexts that are illustrated by local cases and socio-cultural practices. For example, there would be focus on the growing health issues like diabetes as an endemic chronic disease linked to the Asian preference for rice consumption.
Environmental Trends in Energy Security
Environmental and energy issues connect many Southeast Asian countries’ most pressing security problems: potential conflicts over adequate supply of natural resources, the destabilizing environmental and social impacts of climate change, and the human food and water security needs connected with poverty, the provision of electricity and fuels, and environmental stewardship. These challenges can be encapsulated in a broad definition of the term “environmental security,” or the reliable, affordable, efficient, and environmentally responsible access to energy services. Monitoring trends in the factors that accelerate the depletion of fossil fuels, influence the price of electricity and gasoline, slow the availability of renewable resources or prevent the distribution of food, water and energy supplies to rural and poor populations in developing countries, and shape public attitudes toward resource and energy uses in the region is of crucial importance to policymakers and investors alike.
When loosely defined, energy security can mean practically anything. But in the Southeast Asian context, four different dimensions appear most important. First, the availability and scarcity of energy fuels such as oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium can significantly affect the economic well-being of exporting countries such as Brunei and Myanmar or importing countries such as Indonesia and Singapore. Second, the sudden lack of affordability of energy sources such as electricity and gasoline, due to price hikes or price volatility, can have grave repercussions on energy-intensive industries as well as commercial firms, food stalls, farmers, and ordinary households. Third, the market deployment and penetration of food and energy supplies (such as agricultural and industrial production, or power sources) determines the degree that domestic energy sectors damage the natural environment and affect economies from interruptions in supply. Fourth, the distribution of food, water and energy-related services to those in poverty, those without access to basic nutrition, electricity and basic commodities such as lighting and heat, is an essential human rights concern.