Full Report - Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia - escap

THE STATE OF INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN UNCERTAIN TIMES CHAPTER 1
2006). Access to electricity is not available for more
than a billion people in Asia and the Pacific, the
majority of which are rural poor.
Rural farmers have found their access to finance
constrained, in particular as a result of the structural
adjustment programmes of the 1980s as well as
the removal of subsidized credit schemes. With
financial deregulation and changes in monetary
policy, schemes of specialized credit and agricultural
refinance operated by central banks are no longer
available. Rediscount rates are now set by many
central banks and specific sectors are not directly
supported. Lending for agriculture by commercial
banks is naturally curtailed in response to low
returns and lack of availability of collateral.
Expenditure on agricultural research
and development in Asia-Pacific
remains much lower than in developed
countries
While expenditure on research and development in
the Asia-Pacific region has gradually increased, it
remains much lower than in developed countries.
Furthermore, in some countries it either declined
or remained stagnant. In China, research and
development spending decreased in 2000 to 0.4%
of value-added in agriculture from 0.57% in the
early 1960s. In Thailand, there has been little
increase over the decades, with research and
development spending remaining at 0.4-0.5% since
the 1970s, though there has been some recent
upward movement. India increased its research and
development expenditure in the 2000s from 0.18%
of agricultural value-added to 0.34%.
The share of the private sector in agricultural
research and development in the Asia-Pacific region
is appallingly low at approximately 8% compared
with about 54% in developed countries. Therefore,
governments have to play a much larger role in
lifting agricultural productivity by investing in research
and development, rural infrastructure and extension
services as well as improving access to education
and health for improving human capital.
Improvement in agricultural productivity is critical for
not only insulating the region from the volatility
of global markets and enhancing food security,
but also to reduce poverty and inequality. ESCAP
estimates show that a 1% increase in agricultural
productivity would lead to a 0.37% drop in poverty
in the Asia-Pacific region (ESCAP, 2008). Given the
large agricultural labour productivity gaps among
countries in the region, the potential gains would be
substantial. For example, raising the region’s average
agricultural productivity to the level of Thailand,
could take 218 million people out of poverty. India
has the most to gain from accelerated agricultural
productivity growth, with nearly two-thirds of the
region’s poor and a large agricultural productivity gap.
In this context, in past years, ESCAP highlighted
the need for a second “green revolution” based on
sustainable agriculture to raise the region’s agricultural
productivity (ESCAP, 2009b; and 2010a).
Unsustainable resource use
Industrialization and an expanding and increasingly
affluent consumer base have boosted the demand
for all kinds of resources. Trends in the use of
biomass, energy, construction and other minerals
show that while the economies of other regions
of the world are becoming less resource-intensive
over time, the Asia-Pacific economy is requiring
more resources to produce one dollar of GDP as
the economy grows (see figure 1.25). One factor
behind this is the still-significant unmet needs of
developing countries in the region. However, a
large part can be attributed to economic growth
strategies employed by countries. Notably, the region
as a whole in 2008 used almost twice the input
of resources 16 to create one unit of GDP as the
global economy.
Figure 1.26 shows that while the per capita domestic
material consumption in the Asian and Pacific region
is still below that of the world, the gap narrowed
significantly between 1992 and 2008. The use
of resources in economies in the Pacific, East
and North-East Asia and North and Central Asia
which have more affluent lifestyles, rely heavily
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