Concept Paper: Ensuring sustainable development: a common challenge for Asia and Europe

During the last Asia-Europe Meeting in Beijing in 2008, a common declaration on sustainable development cleared the path for further cooperation on sustainable development. Economic development, social progress and environmental protection are interdependent processes, and can only be tackled through an internal and external coordination within and between the two regions. Pertinent issues are food and energy security and environmental protection.[1]

 With an external energy dependence of the European Union for more than 50%[2], and a majority of Asian countries as net-importers, Asia and Europe will be increasingly threatened by the economic and political consequences of a shortage of energy.

 Russia and countries in the Middle-East with large Oil and Gas reserves could use the resource dependence of Asia and Europe as a way of political and economic leverage. Competition for Russian Oil and Gas in Asia could frustrate coordination between Asian countries and could also generate geopolitical tensions between China and Japan and India, three major powers in the region.

 Although a common energy policy seems to be difficult to achieve in the short run – even in the European Union- efforts should be made to at least create shared power-grids and stockpiles, and start up intra-regional joint-ventures for energy exploitation.

Asia and Europe should endeavor to avoid competition and use their large internal energy market as leverage in the negotiations with energy oil and gas exporters. This could only be achieved with better coordination within and between the regions and diversification of energy sources and supplies.

Since energy security is closely linked to pollution, joint efforts should be made to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix. Although renewable energy has only a couple percent market-share and can currently only survive because of large subsidies, both regions should continue to invest in renewable energy.  Technology transfer is necessary to modernize the energy sectors of large parts of Asia, and Europe could vice versa benefit from a new market for its energy equipment.

In order to be less energy-dependent the supply-based policy should gradually be shifted to a demand-based policy, with a focus on energy efficiency and energy conservation.

Finally, the recently discovery of an alternative method for nuclear fusion[3], could change the prospects for energy security of Asia and Europe even more.  It could provide an opportunity to cooperate in a sustained joint –project for an environmental friendly, efficient and safe source of energy.

Questions:

1. 1.       How does competition for energy resources between Japan and China cause a threat to the regional stability?


2. 2.       What can be done against the political and economic leverage of oil-exporting countries? What are the opportunities for Asia and Europe to cooperate?


3. 3.       Is the opening-up of the energy market in Asian countries a feasible option for a market-based technology transfer, and what are the alternatives?


4. 4.       How could Asia and Europe corporate in increasing energy efficiency?


5. 5.       Is nuclear fusion a feasible option of renewable energy, and what are the prospect for a joint Asia-Europe project?

Environment

Since the Copenhagen conference finally a global consensus has been reached on climate change and low carbon development.  The Asia-Europe Meeting provide a platform not merely to set targets but to exchange particular knowledge on how these goals should be achieved.

Since the structure of the economies differs among ASEM countries, strategies to meet these goals vary widely. For Western Europe the focus lies on energy efficiency in the transport and power-generation sector.  But for regions in Southeast Asia, the majority of CO2 emission comes from forestry and agriculture. [4]

In general opportunities for reduction are[5]:

-           energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles and industrial equipment

-          Low-carbon energy supply

-          Terrestrial carbon (halting tropical deforestation, reforestation, changing agricultural practices to sequester more soil organic carbon): and

-          Behavioral change

Governments in ASEM should through tax incentives and regulations encourage the change in behavior among citizens and companies.  Also publicity campaigns to create an awareness of citizens not just for the consequences of environmentally unfriendly behavior, but also the relative accessibility and other positive aspects of alternative environmental friendly behavior.

A comprehensive approach to environment should also include other aspects of environmental degradation, are necessary to tackle in order to sustain the livelihood of society. This includes water, air and soil pollution, de-forestation and wildlife deterioration.

ASEM partners should focus on cooperation in research and development to create cleaner production processes, jointly invest in other partners with less resources to cope with these problems, and create incentives for business for a profitable development and production of these technologies,

Questions:

1. 1.       Industrial production is increasingly shifting from Europe and the United States to Asia (especially China and India).  How do the benefits of this new division of labor relate to the costs, for both Asia and Europe?


2. 2.       Not all ASEM partners have the resources to cope with their environmental problems alone. How should aid be distributed, and investment encouraged? Is there any room for conditionality considering the ASEM protocol? If not, what other incentives to change are their?


3. 3.       What prospects are there for a consensus among ASEM partners for targets and policies to tackle environmental problems other than climate change?


4. 4.       Green technology is not only a necessity to avoid further environmental deterioration, but is also an opportunity for business. Since the risks to develop these technologies are sometimes immense, how can ASEM provide  a attractive economic environment for green technology?

Food security

Food security and the eradication of hunger has been one of the targets in the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations, adopted in 2000.[6]  Much effort has been made, even before this adoption and global food production per capita has increasing 15% notwithstanding the population growth of 45% since World War II.[7]

Nevertheless, a vast part of the globe is still struggling with structural food insecurity. One of these regions is South Asia with a prospect of more than 30% malnutrition among pre-school children in 2030.[8]

The research on food-insecurity has often been focused on aggregate levels of analysis, while disaggregated data will expose more drastically the severity of food security.[9] For example, within one household, some children may be malnourished while others do not have to cope with this problem. 

Moreover, on a more general level unequal distribution or ‘entitlement failure’ due to demand failure by unemployment, social exclusion, and production failure is exacerbating the problems of food unavailability. [10]

The causes of the persistence of food insecurity are two-fold. First, transitory food insecurity gets more public attention, while chronic food insecurity is much more ‘intractable’. This means that the most substantive private and public food-programs focus on famine-stricken regions, while the structural sources of food-insecurity get often neglected or ignored. Second, food insecurity is caused by a variety of problems, which include climate extremes, disease epidemics, business or electoral cycles and social-political instability.[11]

One of the pillars of cooperation of Asia and Europe on food-security should be to create awareness for chronic Food-insecurity among the general public in Europe and beyond. This means an engagement with the media and the Asia-Europe Meeting could be a high-profile platform for initiating such projects.

 Other important fields of improvement are the international coordination between the different agencies dealing with the underlying problems of food-security. To deal with food-insecurity is not creating dependency by only increasing the food-availability through food-aid programs, but also to reverse the problem by decreasing risk-exposure and certainly strengthening the coping-mechanisms of people living within food-insecure areas.

This means transfer of technology and knowledge to increase production efficiency in countries stricken by food-insecurity, and demolishing of large food-subsidies in Europe which diminishes the opportunities of farmers in developing countries to export their products which could create a better overall economic performance and well-being for other citizens as well.

Questions

1. 1.       Public opinion in Europe and most developed countries is often quite negative towards Developmental Aid in general. How could Europe and Asia cooperate to increase the efficacy, efficiency and legitimacy of Food Assistance Programs?


2. 2.       Because development aid is under pressure, states are competing for aid, which could entail the possibility of political deals and bargaining. Could ASEM by the platform for a multi-lateral interregional dialogue and a starting-point for multi-lateral assistance instead of bilateral agreements. How could competition for Development Aid and the political motivations for delivering aid be reduced?


3. 3.       Food security involves more than food-availability.  How could Europe support food-insecure parts of Asia in order to reverse rather than avert food-insecurity?


4. 4.       How could the publicity of chronic food-insecurity in Asia be increased?