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NTS Bulletin

NTS Bulletin June 2013

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NTS VIEWPOINT

Should Asian cities be climbing on the ‘resilience’ bandwagon?

By J. Jackson Ewing

Providing essential services to Asia’s booming cities is becoming more difficult. With over 100,000 people thought to be moving to the region’s urban spaces every day, the demands on cities are becoming more pronounced at the same time that environmental stresses make delivering those services harder.

Unsurprisingly, allaying such challenges has become an urban policy priority, and ‘resilience’ has gained traction as a result. But is resilience all that it is made out to be?

Resilience may be broadly defined as the ability of a system to cope with and respond to changes, and its higher visibility in urban planning is laudable. After all, creating more resilient systems can reduce the risks faced by Asia’s most vulnerable urban populations during the initial aftermath of any systems failure and in times of crisis.

Yet, the concept of ‘resilience’ is fraught with ambiguity. It is often unclear who or what is being made more resilient through a given approach. In Asia’s cities, for example, countless infrastructure projects result in people having to move – without adequate safeguards, compensation and relocation strategies in place.

Further, efforts to foster resilience to future challenges may distract from more immediate development needs throughout much of Asia’s urban landscape. Millions of the region’s urban citizens face daily struggles to meet their food, water and sanitation needs; and resilience strategies, in focusing on systems breakdowns or crises, do little to address such systemic shortcomings.

Trade-offs can also exist when fostering resiliency to challenges in different sectors. For example, promoting economic resilience can create new vulnerabilities in other areas. Indeed, it is well-recognised that consumption growth in cities has fomented wide-ranging environmental stresses and social vulnerabilities.

At the same time, too much resilience can have the unwanted effect of rendering systems so unyielding that they fail to evolve with broader trends. Resilience can also require significant resource allocation, such as the costs of creating back-up systems to ensure ‘safe failure’, which must be justified by cities on limited budgets. Policy and resource prioritisation becomes difficult in the face of such trade-offs, and questions about the place of resilience in urban planning and development abound.

There are no uniform pathways for assuaging these problems, but Asia’s experiences demonstrate that resilience goals need to be coupled with efforts to meet short-term urban challenges.

Among the immediate threats are flooding, heatwaves and violent storms, which affect Asian cities as well as the rural peripheries that they depend on for food and resources. Growing environmental degradation and warming climate trends suggest that these challenges are expanding.

It is vital that urban resilience efforts also address these stresses. Otherwise, the quality of life of urban populations, particularly those in informal and at times structurally dangerous housing settlements and workplaces, will be seriously affected; and the stability upon which cities depend compromised.

Thus, while the enthusiasm over resilience is encouraging, it should be framed, prioritised and pursued in ways that position individuals and communities as key beneficiaries, and with human and community progress as the ultimate rationales.

[Note: This NTS Viewpoint draws on the findings of the Expert Working Group Meeting on Advancing Urban Resilience in the Face of Environmental Change held in Singapore in April 2013.]

J. Jackson Ewing is Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore.

Meeting Summary:

Additional Info:

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CLIMATE CHANGE, ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY AND NATURAL DISASTERS

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This report sets out why developing countries should pursue green growth development. By looking at 74 policies and measures from 37 countries and 5 regional initiatives, the report seeks to put forth an action-oriented agenda that is workable at both national and international scales. In addition to the full report, the OECD website also provides a summary for policymakers.

This article highlights the growing significance of risk insurance as a necessary measure for coping with disasters. It argues that while there are several regional initiatives to promote risk insurance, its potential has not as yet been maximised. To make risk insurance more credible, there is a need to substantiate it with input from on-the-ground experiences at the local, regional and national level.

This paper highlights significant points raised during a series of consultations at the regional, national and community level in the Asia-Pacific region on the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (HFA2). Such an output is significant as it provides an update on how the HFA2’s predecessor – the Hyogo Framework for Action – has performed, the gaps that have to be filled and future steps to take.

Events & Announcements

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ENERGY AND HUMAN SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This article argues that the significant transformation in Asian energy consumption – particularly the rise of China and India as major energy consumers and importers – could exacerbate strategic rivalries among countries in the region. The complex nexus of increasing energy demand, energy securitisation by Asian states and greater strategic competition in the region could aggravate existing frictions. To avoid this, it is imperative to foster stronger bilateral, regional and global energy cooperation.

The study employs integrated energy economics models to examine energy supply-demand relationships between the Middle East and Asia. The article argues that alternative energy sources would not significantly alter Asia’s dependence on oil, and the Middle East would remain the region’s major fossil energy supplier. The need for stable and enduring energy supply from the Middle East means that it is imperative for the region to make appropriate investments in oil resources development.

Events & Announcements

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FOOD SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This report focuses on the issue of malnutrition in all its forms – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and overweight and obesity – and its economic and social costs on all countries across income levels. It highlights that it is the entire food system, not just agricultural production, that is important in the eradication of malnutrition.

This report presents global and regional trends for agricultural productivity and trade for the period 2013–2022. According to the report, agricultural production is likely to slow in the medium term in tandem with slower area and productivity growth. Aside from this, crop prices are expected to fall from current highs and hold firm over the medium term.

Events & Announcements

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HEALTH SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

After reviewing tobacco control in the World Health Organization’s combined Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions, the article highlighted the need for a new framework to address tobacco use in the region that incorporates not only medical but also political, economic, environmental and trade concerns. Such a framework could help translate public health research into policy.

This article argues that the greater concentration and connectivity of livestock, persons and products in rapidly developing East and Southeast Asia increase the impact of emerging infectious diseases. Despite improvements in detection and response capacity in the region, deficiencies in the area of assessing risks of disease emergence signify that the capacity to manage threats to public health still needs to be enhanced.

Events & Announcements

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INTERNAL AND CROSS-BORDER CONFLICT

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This article critiques the pragmatic liberal approach to operationalising the Responsibility to Protect and argues that international efforts to stop mass atrocities should take account of the context and possible consequences.

This publication looks at conflict risks associated with exploitation of natural resources. Different aspects of the question are explored, from human rights to accountability and legal frameworks. It provides recommendations for responsible management of natural resources so as to reduce the risks of conflict induced by resources exploitation.

Events & Announcements

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TRANSNATIONAL CRIME

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

This report features the testimonies of Myanmar workers, some as young as 16, who were forced onto fishing vessels for many months and subjected to arduous, often violent, working conditions without pay. The testimonies include accounts of crew murdered at sea and on shore. It highlights a 2009 survey by the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP) which found that 59 per cent of migrants trafficked onto Thai fishing boats reported witnessing the murder of a fellow worker.

On 17 April 2013, the US Senate rejected a proposal to expand background checks for gun purchases. In light of this, this report urges the Obama administration to take action using its existing authority, both to improve the federal government’s ability to prevent dangerous individuals from acquiring or possessing guns, and to enhance investigations of gun-related crime by law enforcement agencies.

This report documents the presentations and discussions at a roundtable meeting focusing on irregular migration in Southeast Asia. Issues discussed include human trafficking, human smuggling and undocumented labour; asylum seekers and refugees; and climate change-induced refugees.

Events & Announcements

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WATER SECURITY

News & Commentaries

Selected Publications

According to this article, lack of direct or formal coordination between upper and lower riparian countries along the Jordan River is a key issue. It argues that in the short- and medium-term, partial restoration of the Lower Jordan River should be considered a priority, together with partial restoration of the Dead Sea or increased supply of potable water to Amman (Jordan) and other areas.

This paper analyses the potential benefits of a market-based, decentralised water management system for the Aral Sea basin using an aggregated integrated hydro-economic model. The findings suggest that water users would gain from both inter-catchment and intra-catchment trading, provided that transaction costs are low enough.

This report summarises the findings of a series of 22 country consultations on the importance of water to national development. A significant observation is that management of water resources is extremely important and requires long-term support. Stakeholders also noted that it is essential to pursue an integrated approach.

Events & Announcements

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Terms of Use:

You are free to publish this material in its entirety or only in part in your newspapers, wire services, internet-based information networks and newsletters and you may use the information in your radio-TV discussions or as a basis for discussion in different fora, provided full credit is given to the author(s) and the Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). Kindly inform the publisher (NTS_Centre@ntu.edu.sg) and provide details of when and where the publication was used.

About the Centre:

The Centre for NTS Studies, based in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), was inaugurated by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Dr Surin Pitsuwan in May 2008. The Centre maintains research in the fields of Climate Change, Food Security, Energy Security, Health Security, as well as Internal and Cross Border Conflict. It produces policy-relevant analyses aimed at furthering awareness and building capacity to address NTS issues and challenges in the Asia Pacific region and beyond. The Centre also provides a platform for scholars and policymakers within and outside Asia to discuss and analyse NTS issues in the region.

The Centre is the Coordinator of the ASEAN-Canada Research Partnership (2012–2015) supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. It also serves as the Secretariat of the initiative.

In 2009, the Centre was chosen by the MacArthur Foundation as a lead institution for its three-year Asia Security Initiative (2009–2012), to develop policy research capacity and recommend policies on the critical security challenges facing the Asia-Pacific. It is also a founding member and the Secretariat for the Consortium of Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies in Asia (NTS-Asia).

More information on the Centre can be found at www.rsis.edu.sg/nts.


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