Credit: Unsplash / Lynda Hinton

By Kaveh Zahedi and Van Nguyen
BANGKOK, Thailand, Aug 4 2020 (IPS)

After decades of impressive growth, for the first time, Southeast Asia is experiencing a drop in measured human development. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will likely take months to reveal itself and years to put right. Yet, a legacy of mobilizing under constraints is leading Southeast Asia’s pandemic response.

During the first two months of COVID-19 lockdown, the once bustling streets of Bangkok were unusually quiet. In the alley nested between two high-end shopping malls in downtown Bangkok, an elderly couple were not at their usual rice cart. Their regulars, motorbike taxi drivers and shop assistants, were absent. The couple have not returned now that things have eased. A Thai blind massage team shared, in our recent dialogue, that for them, no tourism equals no clients and no income.

Similar tales of woe can be heard in many other poor communities across Southeast Asia. Garbage pickers in the slums outside Manila; temporary workers living outside industrial zones in Ho Chi Minh city; undocumented migrants and refugees living along the borders of Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. They are among the 177 million people (below the $5.5 poverty line) that the World Bank now estimates will slip into poverty.

Southeast Asian communities are no strangers to calamities. In those times, they could probably turn to a relative, a friend or a neighbor for help. Or work extra to make up for the lost income. But the usual informal safety net only works if some are spared from the disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic does the exact opposite, striking everyone down at the same time. Closed restaurants need no kitchen hands; street hawkers and motorbike taxis are idle when all stay at home; empty hotels need no cleaning. The new brief by the Secretary General shows that Southeast Asia’s GDP is estimated to contract on average by 0.1 per cent in 2020 with 218 million informal workers having their livelihoods at risk.

The informality of work means that they are not protected by any formal social safety nets. Even before the crisis, our analysis shows that 60 per cent of the population in Asia and the Pacific had no protection when they become sick, disabled or unemployed. Many are so invisible that they would not even figure in the statistics. The prolonged drought in much of Southeast Asia and the looming monsoons in the coming months may risk sweeping away the few assets they have left. Their hopes for the future, investment in their children’s education, look grim. Poor children without internet access, computers and smart phones cannot readily jump into remote learning during school closures. Without safety nets, either formal or informal, to fall back on, many will inevitably slide into poverty with no clear respite in sight.

Yet good news has come from Southeast Asia. The region was among the first to be hit by the pandemic and contains some of the countries with the greatest success in curbing it, including Viet Nam and Thailand. Governments have been quick to roll out fiscal packages to help affected businesses and households. Our review of COVID-19 responses reveals a diverse mix of relief packages including support for health responders, subsidies for small and medium-sized enterprises, wage subsidies and direct cash transfers for vulnerable populations.

A myriad of local initiatives are another source of great hope. In Thailand, local voluntary groups have quickly come together to locate and provide essential packages to the most in-need communities, including those unregistered. New ways of providing health support have emerged such as teleconsultation for rehabilitation in Singapore and targeted telehealth services for children with disabilities in Malaysia. These good practices were shared in our recent dialogue for protecting and empowering persons with disabilities. Permeating these practices is a strong sense of coming together from both the public and private sector.

The crisis has also shown that limited fiscal space and resources have not stopped countries from supporting their people. Measures that once were thought to be expensive such as establishing universal health care and broadening social protection coverage are now rightly seen as essential investments in people. Measures that were seen as luxuries such as securing internet for all are now recognized as a lifeline especially for poor and vulnerable communities including refugees and migrants. Measures that would help us respond faster to crises such as providing people with basic legal identity are now a must.

Southeast Asia’s long road to recovery has started. Time will tell if the emergency measures can be “locked in” to help address the region’s deep inequalities and put it on a green recovery path as advocated by the United Nations Secretary General in his recent brief on COVID-19 in Southeast Asia. Only then will the people of Southeast Asia be more resilient in any future crisis.

Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Van Nguyen, Sustainable Development Officer, Office of the Executive Secretary, ESCAP

“The 2030 Agenda is coming to life”, declared the Secretary General at the opening of the first SDG Summit, a quadrennial event for the follow up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As leaders from Asia – Pacific took the floor, they highlighted country progress of SDG implementation and reaffirmed commitment to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Statements reflected different approaches across the region. Yet all converged on one priority: accelerated actions and transformative pathways.

Kaveh Zahedi

Because we are not on track.

Earlier this year, our Asia Pacific SDG Progress Report emphasized the region will not achieve any of the 17 SDGs by 2030 at the current pace of progress. While less people in Asia and the Pacific are living in extreme poverty (Goal 1), the poorest are harder to reach. They are more vulnerable to stresses and shocks as progress in reducing inequality has stagnated (Goal 10). Our region’s stubborn reliance on fossil fuels (Goal 7) continues to anchor countries to the grey economy of the past, shroud crowded cities with smog (Goal 11), and put millions of lives at risk (Goal 3). Communities living in low lying coastal areas are seeing their homes being swept away by rising sea levels (Goal 11) as climate actions have yet to take effect (Goal 13).

Business as usual is simply not an option.

Accelerating progress is essentially not about advancing on a single or a cluster of goals. Transformations are needed in the underlying systems behind the 17 Goals. Six entry points identified in the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 offer a clear pathway to trigger change and multiply the impacts of our actions.

They resonate greatly with the development challenges of Asia – Pacific.

Investing in human well-being and capabilities such as increased public spending in Asia – Pacific to match the global average in the area of education, health and social protection, can lift over 328 million out of extreme poverty by 2030. It will also allow us to build resilience of the most vulnerable populations against external shocks, as revealed in ESCAP’s 2018 Social Outlook for Asia Pacific.

Increased investment to achieve energy decarbonization and universal access to energy would allow our region to reduce energy-related carbon dioxide emission by almost 30%; and avoid nearly 2 million premature deaths by 2030, as shown in ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2019.

The entry point of promoting sustainable urban and peri-urban development is ever more critical as our region became majority urban for the first time in human history in 2019. The Future of Asian & Pacific cities Report 2019 shows that 1.2 billion new residents will move to Asian-Pacific cities by 2050. They will all need decent jobs, affordable housing, transportation, and clean water and sanitation.

Van Nguyen

We have the tools to support this transformation, with the four levers identified in the Global Sustainable Development Report 2019.

Governance, particularly effective, transparent, accessible and inclusive institutions, is fundamental to drive the implementation of the Goals. Countries gathering at the 6th Asia-Pacific Forum for Sustainable Development declared that the delivery of the SDGs relies on the whole-of-society approach.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships and participation are key success factors.

Sound economic policies and finance are key to fast track progress. ESCAP’s Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2019 estimates that the annual additional investment of 1.5 trillion to achieve the SDGs by 2030 in Asia-Pacific is affordable if countries develop sound tax policy, efficient public spending and private sector engagement.

Empowerment and inclusion, the epicenter of individual and collective action, was found to contribute to reducing inequality and accelerating the progress towards a broad array of the SDGs, according to the 2019 research Accelerating progress: An empowered, inclusive and equal Asia Pacific.

Emerging technologies and innovations have the potential to change lives on an unprecedented scale. One such example is the use of big data applications in forecasting and early warning of extreme weather events, such as during the super typhoon Mangkhut in 2018, documented in the ESCAP’s Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2019. Such good practices need to be scaled up.

The SDG Summit concluded with a political declaration which calls for a “decade of action and delivery for sustainable development”. Since then, we have seen over twenty commitments for actions for Asia-Pacific by Governments, civil society organisations and the private sector across the 17 Goals registered on the SDG Acceleration Platform. This has given us hope as we move into the year of 2020. The region is arriving at this critical juncture in the path towards sustainable development. We know where we want to be. It is time to deliver on our pledge.

Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary for Sustainable Development, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)

Van Nguyen, Sustainable Development Officer, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)