Authors: Mohsin Khan, PIIE and Shuja Nawaz, Atlantic Council, Washington

The floods in Pakistan have affected one-fifth of the country (an area roughly the size of England) and engulfed large parts of all four provinces—Punjab, Balochistan, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the North West Frontier Province). The vast scope of the damage makes this a truly national disaster with long-term economic and political consequences. With waters still rising, it is far too early to assess the economic costs; a proper assessment will be made in time by the Government of Pakistan, assisted by the UN and the World Bank. But on the basis of early indicators, a preliminary and admittedly impressionistic view of the damage can be formed.

The immediate impact on the population is truly staggering—20 million people affected with 8 million in need of water, food and shelter; 1500-2000 killed; 4 million left homeless; and 15 million displaced. Read more…

Authors: Adil Khan Miankhel and Shahbaz Nasir, ANU

Pakistan is experiencing its worst natural disaster.  While the human toll of the disaster is bad enough, the collateral economic damage is catastrophic. Flooding is spread over all four provinces of Pakistan, affecting 20 million people, a population equal to Australia’s, and inundating a geographical area the size of England.

Louis-George Arsenault, director of emergency services for UNICEF, says the flood crisis in Pakistan is the biggest humanitarian crisis in decades. Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), says the flood is worse than the tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake and the Haiti earthquake. Read more…

Author: Marife Ballesteros, PIDS

The enactment in the nineties of the Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) of 1992 and the Comprehensive Shelter Finance Act (CISFA) of 1994, two pro-poor housing legislations, greatly changed the Philippines’ policy on housing the poor. From a highly centralised and heavily subsidised policy, the government moved to a market-oriented and participatory approach to housing. Despite these reforms, the problems with UDHA and CISFA have not delivered housing on the scale or of the quality that is required.

The National Shelter Program (NSP), which regulates housing production, regulation and financing, is the Philippines’ banner program for low-income housing provision. Read more…

Author: Andrei Lankov, Kookmin University and ANU

Over the past year or so, something strange has begun to happen in Pyongyang. The North Korean leadership has taken some actions that have clearly damaged the interests of the ruling clique.

The recent currency reform is the best example of self-defeating policy decisions. For years, the Pyongyang government has waged campaigns against the unofficial and semi-official markets that have played a decisive role in North Korea’s economic life since the collapse of the state-run economy in the 1990s. Read more…

Author: Stuart Harris, ANU

The still highly complex relationship between China and Taiwan can be seen in the reactions of both countries following the Haiti earthquake. One Taiwanese and eight Chinese lives were claimed by the disaster, and both countries have given substantial aid (initially $4.2 million and $5 million respectively) as well as sent teams to assist with relief efforts. But so far there have been few, if any, signs of Chinese pressure to change Haiti’s diplomatic links with Taiwan.

This may be an attempt by China to live up to its role as a global power – after all, four of the Chinese casualties were members of the UN peacekeeping force. Read more…

Author: Quentin Grafton, Crawford School, ANU

Despite its importance, water rarely receives the attention it deserves, at least in rich countries, except when there is too much (floods) or too little (droughts) available. Indeed, many people do not even know how much they pay for water which, by weight, is by far the most important natural resource they consume. In high income countries, such as Australia, the average household consumption per capita is 285 L per day or 104 KL or Cu.M per year. Even on a global scale, water withdrawal by humans is substantial and represents about 30 per cent of total accessible runoff and is increasing as global water consumption rose over sixfold in the 20th century.

The lack of attention to water, at least in rich countries, is because many people pay very little for it — it accounts for less than 1 percent of household budgets in wealthy nations — and it is readily available 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. Read more…

Author: James Boyers, ANU

Just after the swearing-in of the new Administrator of USAID, Dr Rajiv Shah, and on the eve of her aborted trip to Asia and Australia, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, delivered an address at the Petersen Institute for International Economics, outlining the Obama administration’s approach to international development. In her opening remarks, Secretary Clinton described the provision of aid and development assistance ‘as central to advancing American interests and solving global problems as diplomacy and defence.’ The goal of development, articulated by Secretary Clinton, is to advance global security, improve America’s security, and project American values and leadership in the world.

In order to achieve these goals, Secretary Clinton outlined six ‘steps’ being taken by the administration. Read more…

Author: Trevor Wilson, ANU

One of the Obama Administration’s most politically radical yet strategically insignificant policy shifts has been to resume regular diplomatic contact with the Burmese military regime. Indeed, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific, Kurt Campbell, visited Burma in November.

In content, the new policy may seem not to amount to much – pursuing normal high-level exchanges on policy with the generals, providing some more assistance, and allowing regime leaders to travel to and in the United States. But it involves some deeply symbolical steps and recognises for the first time that some direct engagement with the regime might prove more effective in influencing the generals to change some of their unacceptable policies on political freedoms and human rights abuses. Read more…

Author: Peter McCawley

It is now almost five years since December 2004, when the great tsunami swept across more than a dozen countries in Asia. More than 230, 000 people died across the region. The cost to human life was mainly borne by Indonesia, in Aceh, where perhaps 170, 000 people were swept away. Five years later, the pain is still evident across Aceh. Many thousands of families will forever carry the memory of family members who were lost. The human cost was immense.

There are many lessons to be drawn about disaster relief policies in Asia from the experience of the 2004 tsunami. Below I list eight key lessons that need attention above all others. Read more…

Author: Philippa Brant

Australia has traditionally seen the South Pacific as ‘its’ backyard. China’s increasing engagement in the South Pacific has prompted some concern in political and policymaking circles. The less than transparent nature of China’s foreign policy decisions – its foreign aid programs in particular, have resulted in the tendency to jump to negative conclusions about the ‘threat’ China’s involvement may pose to Australian (and Western) interests in the region. This analysis tends to ignore the role of Pacific Island countries themselves in determining their partners, and the implications of Australia’s own approach to regional power dynamics.

The Australian and New Zealand hardline stance with the Fijian Interim Government has created opportunities for China and other Asian countries to increase their engagement in the region. Read more…

Author: Andrew Elek

Last month, Arvind Subramanian published a valuable piece in the Business Standard, New Delhi in which he recommends that the G20 should promote increased international financing of international public goods, such as technology to help cope with climate change or raise agricultural productivity. He also recommends that the World Bank should devote a considerably larger share of its financing to this purpose.

The first of these deserves strong support, but it is not certain that reforming the World Bank is the most appropriate means of enhancing the funding of international public goods.

Read more…

Author: Fergus Hanson

Watching China’s reaction to the failed Rio-Chinalco deal and the decision to let Rebiya Kadeer into the country has been interesting. To an outside observer, the rhetoric and response from Beijing sometimes seem surprisingly immature.

But China doesn’t reserve its overzealous responses for the big picture multi-billion deals and alleged terrorists. In 2008, I released a policy brief on China’s aid program in the Pacific. The Chinese Foreign Ministry opted to counter with an official rebuke at a news conference, calling it ‘totally pointless and unacceptable’. When this year’s version of the report, which tracks China’s aid giving in the region, came out, it was the Communist Party mouthpiece, the Global Times that laid in.

Read more…

Author: Andrei Lankov, Kookmin University

Bill Clinton’s trip to Pyongyang and the release of the American journalists confirmed what many observers have suspected since early July: North Korea is indicating its willingness to re-start talks with the United States. There are reasons why Washington should not rush to the negotiation table immediately, but few people doubt that these talks will start relatively soon.

The negotiations are likely to be characterized as talks about getting the North to give up its nuclear weapons. But one should not be misled: No amount of diplomatic dealing can achieve that goal.

Read more…

Author: Graeme Dobell

The problem for Australia’s aid bureaucrats is that spending nearly $4 billion doesn’t necessarily buy much respect in Canberra. Or bureaucratic power.

Being an efficient spender of cash is not to be scoffed at. AusAID has developed important skills: running tenders, operating contracts and transferring money. But the institutional effect is that AusAID doesn’t always get invited to the policy table. When invited, it speaks last.

The process of selecting a new Director-General of AusAID will force the Rudd Government and Foreign Affairs to confront what it wants to do with aid. As noted in my previous column, Bruce Davis headed AusAID for a decade. That is an unusual tenure for almost any era. At the end, the Government announced that Davis was going and then had him gone in only three days.

Read more…

Author: Andrei Lankov, Kookmin University, Seoul

Why is Pyongyang Striking Back?

Foreign Aid and Changes in the International Environment

Why is the North Korean leadership so eager to move backward? Given that this same leadership grudgingly tolerated dramatic liberalization in the late 1990s, what changes in the domestic and international situations made this turn of policy, first, possible and, second, desirable?

In order to answer these questions other important changes to the international position of the North Korean regime that occurred between 2000 and 2002 must be briefly considered. From 1998 to 2008 South Korea was governed by left-leaning administrations whose approach to North Korea was known as the Sunshine Policy. This policy envisioned a dramatic increase in unilateral aid to North Korea, typically without any pre-existing conditions. Thus, the amount of aid provided through both government and private channels increased dramatically around 2000, emphasized by the first Korean summit in 2000. The surge in aid was accompanied by a dramatic increase in trade and commercial exchanges, frequently subsidized by South Korea and therefore differing very little from direct aid.

Read more…