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Millennium Development Goal 1: poverty,

hunger and decent work in Southeast Asia
Neil Renwick
Professor of Global Development, Department of International Studies and

Social Sciences , Coventry University , Priory Street, Coventry , CVI 5FB
Published online: 23 Feb 2011.
To cite this article: Neil Renwick (2011) Millennium Development Goal 1: poverty, hunger and decent work in
Southeast Asia, Third World Quarterly, 32:1, 65-89, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.543814
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Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2011, pp 6589
Millennium Development Goal 1:

poverty, hunger and decent work
in Southeast Asia
Downloaded by [Gadjah Mada University] at 06:12 05 February 2015
NEIL RENWICK
ABSTRACT This article considers three questions: 1) what progress has been
made in achieving MDG1 targets?; 2) what challenges remain?; and 3) what more
could and should be done? To examine these questions, the article assesses the
progress of Southeast Asia in seeking to achieve MDG1. It argues that the region is
on track to achieve MDG 1 targets, although signicant challenges such as
inequality remain. Economic growth, signicant structural change and incorporation into global value chains have contributed to MDG progress. However, this is a
double-edged sword as exposure to global economic turbulence can increase. The
longer-term reduction of poverty, inequality and social exclusion is a question of
empowerment of local producers within value chainsa shift in economic power and
control through pro-poor strategies strong enough to eect substantive structural
change. The article outlines key concepts; identies the main characteristics of
Southeast Asian poverty; outlines what more needs to be done; and concludes by
reprising the articles ndings and weighing the prospects for 201015 and beyond.
With ve years to go to the target date of 2015, the prospect of falling short of
achieving the Goals because of a lack of commitment is very real. This would be
an unacceptable failure from both the moral and the practical standpoint. If we
fail, the dangers in the worldinstability, violence, epidemic diseases, environmental degradation, runaway population growthwill all be multiplied.1
Introduction
Millennium Development Goal 1 (MDG1) sets three targets: 1) Halve,
between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than
one dollar a day; 2) Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people
who suer from hunger; and 3) Achieve full and productive employment
and decent work for all, including women and young people.
This article considers three questions: 1) what progress has been made in
achieving these MDG1 targets? 2) What challenges remain? 3) What more
Neil Renwick is Professor of Global Development, Department of International Studies and Social Sciences,
Coventry University, Priory Street, Coventry, CVI 5FB. Email: n.renwick@coventry.ac.uk.
ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/11/01006525
2011 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com
DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.543814
65
NEIL RENWICK
could and should be done? To examine these global questions, the progress of
Southeast Asia toward achieving MDG1 will be assessed. Its vast and highly
diverse nature, a combination of countries classied as early achievers, ontrack and o-track with respect to the MDGs,2 and the signicant role the
regional economy plays in the global economy marks the region out as a
particularly interesting case study. According to the Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacic (ESCAP), many of the Southeast Asian
states are on track to achieve MDG targets, although signicant challenges
such as inequality remain. Economic growth, signicant structural change
and a deeper penetration into global value chains have contributed to MDG
progress. However, this is a double-edged sword. Signicant poverty, hunger
and exploitative work remain prevalent throughout the region and the
process of integration into the regional and global economies and value
chains necessarily increases exposure to economic vagaries. The paper argues
that the longer-term reduction of poverty, inequality and social exclusion is a
question of empowerment of local producers within the value chains. This is
a shift in economic power and control through pro-poor strategies strong
enough to aect substantive structural change. Following this introductory
discussion, the paper outlines key concepts; identies the main characteristics
of Southeast Asian poverty; outlines what more needs to be done; and
concludes by revisiting the research questions, reprising the studys ndings
and weighing the prospects for 201015 and beyond.
Growth is good for the poor
The developed economies recorded an average rate of real GDP growth of
2.4 per cent over the 19982006 period, developing economies a rate of
4.8 per cent and the least developed economies 6.6 per cent. Between 2004
and 2007 global GDP rose at the fastest pace for over a generation, driven by
a phenomenal growth in the volume of world tradeup by an average of
8.5 per cent over the four-year period.3 The years of prolonged global
economic growth facilitated poverty reduction, with millions of people being
drawn out of poverty reinforcing an emerging conventional wisdom across
the multilateral institutional response to poverty reduction, encapsulated in
the title of the controversial World Bank sta paper Growth is Good for the
Poor.4 This study by Dollar and Kraay was produced by the World Banks
Development Research Group (DRG), run at the time by Paul Collier. In his
own best-selling study, The Bottom Billion, Collier re-states the case with
respect to the worlds poorest: the problem of the bottom billion is that they
have not grown. The failure of the growth process in these societies has to be
our core concern, and curing it the core challenge of development.5 As
ESCAP states: Since economic growth helps reduce poverty, slower growth
will correspondingly mean that fewer people will escape from poverty.
Similarly, The United Nations MDG (UNMDG) Report 2008 argued that:
Most developing countries eorts to achieve the MDGs have beneted from
the improved economic growth and relatively low ination that characterized
much of the period since 2000. This discursive theme is evident across the
66
POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
United Nations institutions such as ESCAP, UNMDG and the International

Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and Southeast Asian regional
bodies like the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and ASEAN and national
governments.6 MESCAP noted in its 2008 annual review of the region that its
review of 14 AsiaPacic countries (including Indonesia and Thailand)
showed that, while all countries had distinctive features they generally took a
common approach. All emphasized the importance of stable, broad-based,
inclusive and participatory economic growth.7
This commitment to economic growth as the primary instrument for poverty
reduction is underwritten by an economic and political consensus that the
primary means to achieve sustained growth is through global free trade and
foreign direct investment (FDI) ows. This classic objective was to be achieved
through a broader and deeper integration of national and regional markets
into single global product markets, a stronger commitment to the elimination
of discriminatory trade barriers and the establishment of universally accepted
and enforced trade regulations. This basic assumption lies at the heart of the
creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and is embodied in
the Monterrey Consensus of 2000 that committed signatory states to actively
promote international trade as an engine of development.8
This dominant perspective, with its weighting placed on economic growth,
is not, of course, uncontested by perspectives that emphasise the importance
of good governance or greater state interventionism or social economic
initiatives. Dollar and Kraays 2000 study had excluded factors such as good
governance as impinging upon poverty reduction. They concluded that: We
nd no evidence that formal democratic institutions or public spending on
health and education have systematic eects on incomes of the poor.9 Nor is
it uncontested within its own discursive domain where important debates and
qualications emerged with respect to the structure and balance of growth,
the type of growth to be advanced; the persistence of inequality and its
relationship to high rates of growth; and issues of distributional justice. For
example, from within the DRG itself, Martin Ravallion, while accepting the
proposition that absolute poverty in terms of consumption (or income) is
the overriding issue in poor countries, has questioned the proposition that
the only thing that really matters to reducing absolute income poverty is
the rate of economic growth. Rather, he argues that inequality is bad for the
poor and inuences the extent of poverty.10 These latter considerations have
emerged more strongly in the wake of the global nancial crisis with an
emphasis on new regional and domestic sources of economic growth;
balanced or more diversied sources of growth; more moderate growth
linked to reductions in inequality; and a refocusing on the multidimensional
character of poverty (including environmental factors for green growth11).
ESCAP, for example, has identied growth gaps that aect key aspects of
MDG1. It argues that improving the structure and quality of growth is vital:
One way of attempting to ll the gaps would be to increase economic growth.
An analysis of 25 countries across the region suggests that this would have the
most eect on income poverty: if per capita GDP rises by one per cent, the
67
NEIL RENWICK
headcount poverty ratio tends to fall by 0.86 per cent. Growth has less eect on
under-nutrition: a one per cent increase in per capita GDP is associated with a
drop of about half a per cent in under-nutrition. Growth also appears to have a
smaller eect on infant and under-ve mortality and on maternal mortality.
Countries that rely only economic growth are thus likely to fall short . . . To
achieve the goals they will need to improve the structure and quality of economic
growth and make appropriate changes to national development strategies.12
Nonetheless, whilst a discursive and policy shift took place in the 1990s, a
critical shift also took place in the way that growth was being delivered in
practice by the global economy.13 In seeking to understand and explain this
global shift in an era of globalisation, increasing attention has been paid to
the impact of Global Value Chains (GVCs). At its most straightforward a value
chain describes the full range of activities which are required to bring a
product or service from conception, through the dierent phases of production
(involving a combination of physical transformation and the input of various
producer services), delivery to nal consumers, and nal disposal after use.14
Recognition of the role of GVCs focuses our attention on questions of
power and control: how can producers and communities in developing
economies gain access to the GVCs and what are the terms and conditions
under which they do so? How can they maximise their share of the value
realised through the value chain? How, as Stamm points out, can they draw
non-tangible benets (technological and organisational learning) from
integration into value chains?15
Despite the decades of global economic growth, the overall challenge of
poverty remained largely unchanged in developing countries, with 1.2 billion
still living in poverty at the Millennium. MDG1 was created in response to this. In
2005 trends indicated that the developing world could potentially meet MDG1.
UN statistics showed that the proportion of people in developing regions living
on less than $1.25 a day declined from 42 per cent in 1990 to 31 per cent in 1999
and to 25 per cent in 2005.16 Nevertheless, at the same time, inequality increased
in these countries, with the share of national consumption of the poorest
20 per cent reduced from 4.6 per cent to 3.9 per cent between 1990 and 2004.17
Clearly, the global nancial and economic crisis has slowed progress on MDG1.
The Global Monitoring Report 2010 estimates that, by 2015, the global poverty
rate will be 15 per cent rather than 14.1 per cent without the crisis; leaving an
extra 64 million people in extreme poverty by the end of 2010 (based on the $1.25
benchmark). The recovery will not make up all the lost ground. And as a result
of the crisis, 71 million fewer people will have escaped poverty by 2020.18
The experience of poverty reduction has a parallel in the history of tackling
world hunger. The period from the end of the 1960s to the end of the 1990s
showed good progress in reducing world hunger (see Table 1). In 1996 world
leaders at the World Food Summit in Rome pledged to halve by 2015 the
number of undernourished people (The Rome Declaration), a commitment
later reconrmed in MDG1. The number of underweight children under age
ve was cut from 31 per cent to 26 per cent between 1990 and 2007.19
However, global levels of hunger were rising signicantly between 2002 and
68
TABLE 1. Number of undernourished persons in the world

World
200002
199597
199092
197981
196971
Number of undernourished persons (millions)
Percentage of world population
857
825
845
853
878
14
14
16
19
24
Source: FAO, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009: Economic CrisesImpacts and Lessons
Learned, Rome: FAO, October 2009.
2006 and the sudden dramatic increase in food prices and the global economic
crisis in 2008 severely exacerbated this trend, pushing millions more back into
hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that,
globally, 1.02 billion people (one-sixth of the worlds population) were
undernourished in 2009,20 while over one-third of children in developing
countries (up to half in many countries) have chronic malnutrition.21
Poverty and hunger are intimately bound to opportunities for full and
productive employment and decent work for all. Our concern here is with
workers in vulnerable employment and with the extreme working poor.
Vulnerable employment is dened by the International Labour Organisation
(ILO) as the sum of own-account workers and contributing family workers.
These workers are less likely to have formal working conditions. Consequently,
they lack the recognised facets of decent employment such as social security and
welfare provisions and are subject to inadequate earnings, low productivity
and dicult conditions of work that undermine workers fundamental rights.
The global number of workers in vulnerable employment fell between 2007 and
2008 by around 10.5 million people, or 1.1 per cent, to just below half of all
workers (49.5 per cent) for the rst time. However, the number may have risen
again between 2008 and 2009 by between 41.6 and 109.5 million, depending
upon the ILOs modelling scenario. Those in working poverty, ie the number of
those in employment but living on less than $1.25 a day, decreased between
1998 and 2008 by 16.3 per cent and, at the $2 a day poverty line, they fell by 17
per cent. Nonetheless, the proportion of extreme working poor in total
employment was still 21.2 per cent in 2008, a total of 633 million workers living
on less than $1.25 a day, while 39.7 per cent of all workers were living on less
than $2 a day, equal to 1183 million workers. Again, the global economic crisis
has weakened this progress. The ILO estimates that, between 2008 and 2009, an
extra 7 per cent of workers were at risk of falling into poverty, creating an
additional 215 million working poor; using the $2 a day poverty line, the
proportion at risk would be up to 5.9 some 185 million workers.22
As we have seen, the global challenge of meeting MDG1 has been increased
by the global nancial crisis. In Southeast Asia growth slowed to 1.2 per cent
in 2009 and aggregate GDP would have declined if it had not been for
Indonesia recording 4.5 per cent growth. Five of the 10 economies (Brunei
Darussalam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand) contracted as the
global recession cut into exports and investment ows. In many of the regions
69
NEIL RENWICK
economies imports fell even more sharply than exports, leading to an increase in
the regional current account surplus. However, the ve contracting economies
of 2009 are expected to return to growth in 2010. Based on recovery in global
trade and a rebound in investment, Southeast Asias aggregate growth is
forecast to rebound to 5.1 per cent in 2010.23 Nevertheless, as ESCAP has
highlighted, this is far from being a return to business as usual. The deepest
contractions were experienced by those economies with shares of exports to GDP
that exceeded 60 per cent, and the greater the share of these exports absorbed by
the developed markets, the greater the economic contraction. Consequently the
emphasis is on rebalancing towards greater domestic and regional demand as
the engine of growth and for achieving the MDG1. This has a knock-on eect for
value chain interventions. Those Southeast Asian economies incorporated into
global and regional value chains were also the ones most exposed to the collapse
in global trade demand. Continued sluggishness in the developed economies is
buttressing arguments in favour of greater reliance on domestic and regional
demand as a more sustainable long-term option. Yet many states whose exports
involved regional production networking arrangementsfor products such as
apparel, machinery, electronics and motor vehiclessaw their exports fall
almost twice as rapidly as in the 1997 crisis.24
The available evidence indicates that sustained economic growth matters
fundamentally for MDG1, but not for all levels or purposes. This resonates with
ndings of research in Africa, where a 2006 study of growth in Zambia
concluded that, while growth in general may be good for the poor, it is found
that that not all growth is equally good.25 The following analysis highlights
examples of some important qualications to the prevailing orthodoxy evidenced by inequality in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, by the urban/
rural divide in countries such as Indonesia and by the inability of the benets of
growth to reach some of the most disadvantaged in society even in countries
such as Viet Nam. In the wake of the global nancial and economic crisis,
inclusive and sustainable growth is not only desirable but also a necessary
condition for regaining the regions dynamism.26 Pro-poor value chain interventions that empower local producers and widen participation and inclusivity
can facilitate more sustainable growth contributing to MDG1. This is particularly
signicant with respect to agriculture. Increases in agricultural productivity
and incomes are essential to poverty reduction,27 and this is especially true
in Southeast Asia where, for ve of the ASEAN economies, agriculture accounts
for between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of their respective GDP.
Southeast Asia
This article focuses upon Southeast Asia. For denitional purposes Southeast
Asia is equated with the ASEAN10 member countries (AMCs) comprising
Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand (ASEAN5) plus
Brunei Darussalam (ASEAN6) and recent members Cambodia, Lao PDR,
Burma and Viet Nam (CLMV). The region was on-track to achieve the
poverty reduction goal set out in 2000 in the Millennium Declaration.28
However, having weathered the 199798 Asian nancial crisis and the
70
devastation of the 2004 Asian tsunami, the global nancial crisis came as a
further blow. The ASEAN economies have re-emerged from the global crisis
with new GDP growth and the UN was able to claim that, among the subregions of the AsiaPacic, the greatest progress on the MDG s by 2010 has
been in Southeast Asia, which has already achieved 11 out of the 21 assessed
indicators and is on track for another four.29
Following trade and capital liberalisation and export-led growth strategies,
the majority of the AMCs are rmly hotwired into the global economy and are
heavily dependent on external trade and inward FDI with ASEAN10s ratio of
exports to GDP 54.4 per cent and imports to GDP 48.7 per cent in 2009.
Singapore leads the way with a ratio of exports to GDP of 151.6 per cent and
imports to GDP of 138.1 per cent, followed by Viet Nam, Malaysia and
Thailand. Between 1995 and 2008 ASEAN5 increased its share of Asian GDP
from 7.1 per cent to 9.1 per cent and, in 2009, these economies accounted for
3.52 per cent of global GDP per capita (PPP). The signicance of these
economies is reinforced by IMF projections for the region through 2015 with
total MDG (current prices, US dollars) anticipated to grow to $2343.62 billion,
and GDP per capita to $6915.77.30
Southeast Asias economic development trajectory, together with its growth
and poverty reduction eorts are predicated on the central and prime need for
economic growth driven by strong global trade, inward FDI and ASEAN
regional integration promoted by the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)
Blueprint and the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI). ASEAN agreed a
blueprint for an AEC in Bali in 2003 with the community to be established by
2020. The IAI was agreed by ASEAN leaders in 2004 and is intended to reduce
the development gaps within ASEAN and support newer members in the
process of regional integration. The IAI work plan has four priorities:
infrastructure including energy; human resource development; information
and communication technology; and capacity-building for regional economic
integration. However, there has been a growing recognition by international
organisations, governments and civil society organisations alike that GDP
growth alone is not enough to reduce poverty, hunger and dignied and
productive employment, as evidence indicates that poverty reduction can also
be accompanied by widening inequality between the rich and poor.
Consequently high-growth strategies have increasingly been tempered by
social protection measures to facilitate greater provision of public goods,
growth with equity, or inclusive growth and development. ESCAP captured the
essential character of this approach in its 2006 annual review:
Although the Asian and Pacic region has been growing faster than most
regions of the world for two decades or more, the eradication of extreme
poverty remains its most important challenge. In tackling the problem of
poverty it is important to remember that rapid growth remains the surest route
to reducing both income poverty and non-income poverty. Rapid economic
growth provides opportunities for employment in both the formal and informal
sectors of an economy. It also generates resources for the public sector whereby
issues of non-income poverty, such as insucient or poor-quality public goods
(education, health, transport and housing), can be meaningfully addressed.31
71
NEIL RENWICK
Conceptual approach
The central concept is value chains for development (VCD) and is drawn
from the invaluable work of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam (KIT).
Research on value chains is helping us better explain changes in rms
towards more networked or modular linkages by focusing upon the
governance of global corporations. This approach provides useful evaluative
benchmarks for the assessment of poverty and inequality in Southeast Asia.
It is both an analytical tool and normatively prescriptive. It applies value
chain analysis (VCA) to highlight and explain the relationships between value
chain actors (producers, traders, processors, retailers), non-governmental
organisations and public agencies. Based on this, the approach aims at VCD:
the analysis, design and facilitation of integrated supply chains that are propoor. Pro-poor chain development enhances the economic rent of poorer
householdsthat is, the capacity of the poor to upgrade their position in the
value chain so that they appropriate a greater share of the returns accruing
from the chain. The approach explores means of making the most of value
chains in developing countries through chain empowerment, ie how to
ensure the optimisation of value chains in local and regional markets;
nancial services for pro-poor value chains; sustainable procurement
provisions; pro-poor business development; publicprivate partnership.
The critical elements here are control and capacity. Poverty reduction is
more than increased incomes through growth, vital as that undoubtedly is.
The fundamental goal of poverty reduction strategies ought to be to enhance
the capacity of people to sustain their well-being. This comes from not only
increasing the income of the poor, but ensuring that this can lead to greater
economic control by the poor, that is, a renewed power balance in the value
chain. The prerequisite for achieving more economic control for the poor is
to strengthen the economic, social and organisational capacities of the poor.
Ultimately the primary outcome of VCA and VCD is the maximisation of the
economic rent for the poor. Economic rent refers to the ability of
producers to appropriate areas of value accretion and protect themselves
from the competitive pressures that drive down their terms of trade.32
MDG1
in Southeast Asia
Poverty
Southeast Asias story is one of overall success in terms of the three MDG1
targets. The proportion of people in the region living below $1.25 per day fell
from 39 per cent in 1990 to 35 per cent in 1999 and to 19 per cent in 2005 and
the poverty gap (ie how far the worlds extreme poor fall below the poverty
linethe depth of their poverty) was cut from 11 per cent to 10 per cent to
four per cent, respectively.33 However, as with the wider developing world,
inequality remained an entrenched challenge, with the share of the poorest
quintile in national consumption falling from 6.2 per cent in 1990 to
6.1 per cent in 2004.34
72
TABLE 2. Poverty in Southeast Asia

Population below poverty line
US$1.25 per day (%)

Brunei
Burma
Cambodia
Indonesia
Lao PDR
Malaysia
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Viet Nam
N/A
32.7
31
17.8
26
5.1
32.9
N/A
9.6
12.3
Latest available year
(2007 est)
(2004)
(2006)
(2009 est)
(2002 est)
(2006 est)
(2006 est)
(2009 est)
PPP
US$2 per day (20002007) (%)

N/A
68.2
76.8
7.8
45.0
N/A
11.5
48.4
Sources: Adapted from Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook, Washington, DC: CIA, 2009; and
Association of South East Asian Nations, ASEAN Community in Figures (ACIF) 2009, Jakarta: ASEAN
Secretariat, 2009, at http://www.aseansec.org/ publications/ACIF2009.pdf.
Singapore and Brunei virtually eliminated absolute poverty as they recorded

sustained double-digit economic growth throughout the years between 1960
and 2005. The other economies have also made signicant progress (see
Table 2). However, in rural Thailand, one in 10 households is still poor.
In Indonesia, over 110 million people, or 49 per cent of the population, live on
less than $2 per day. More than 35 million people, 15.4 per cent of the
population, live below the national poverty line of less than 65 cents a day.35
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the challenge of poverty remains substantial
for the national economies of Burma, Cambodia and Lao PDR. According
to ESCAPs most recent assessment, Lao PDR and Cambodia are facing the
greatest risks in achieving MDG1, given a combination of high poverty and
high vulnerability.36 Nevertheless, poverty in Lao PDR declined steadily
from 46 per cent to 33 per cent during the decade 19922002 and, in mid2010, the UNDP Lao is of the view that the country is on course to attain the
37
MDG target of halving poverty by 2015. In Cambodia in 2007 36 per cent of
all Cambodian children under ve years were underweight and Cambodians
had an 18.5 per cent chance of not living to age 40.38 An Overseas
Development Institute (ODI) study concluded in May 2009 that: The global
nancial crisis has had a serious impact on the Cambodian economy, which
has been heavily dependent on the world economy.39 As a result, poverty
incidence has increased in 2009, using the poverty line up to $1 per day.40
Despite progress, one-third of the Cambodian population were still living on
less than $0.60 a day in 2010, and rural poverty is a fundamental challenge.41
The available evidence indicates that economic growth can, as the
prevailing orthodoxy suggests, reduce the levels and magnitude of poverty
in Southeast Asia. However, the key determining factor is persistent
inequality (see Table 3).
In the Philippines, for example, inequality has remained high, which
mitigates the positive impact of growth on poverty reduction. Chronic
73
NEIL RENWICK
TABLE 3. Inequality in Southeast Asia

Share of income or
expenditurea (%)
HDI
Singapore
Brunei
Malaysia
Thailand
Philippines
Indonesia
Viet Nam
Lao PDR
Cambodia
Burma
Rank
23
30
66
87
105
111
116
133
137
138
Inequality measures
Poorest 10%
Richest 10%
Richest 10% to poorest 10%b
Gini indexc
1.9
2.6
2.6
2.4
3.0
3.1
3.7
3.0
32.8
28.5
33.7
33.9
32.3
29.8
27.0
34.2
17.7
11.0
13.1
14.1
10.8
9.7
7.3
11.5
42.5
37.9
42.5
44.0
39.4
37.8
32.6
40.7
Notes: aBecause the underlying household surveys dier in method and type of data collected, cross-country
comparisons should be made with caution as the distribution data are not strictly comparable across
countries. bData show the ratio of the income or expenditure share of the richest group to that of the poorest.
c
The Gini index lies between 0 and 100. A value of 0 represents absolute equality and 100 absolute inequality.
Source: UNDP, Human Development Report 2009: Overcoming BarriersHuman Mobility and Development, New York: UNDP/Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp 195198, Table M.
poverty has become a major constraint in attaining high levels of sustained

growth and the countrys overall development.42 In Thailand there is persistent inequality between the richest 20 per cent and poorest 20 per cent.
Gwi-Yeop Son, resident representative of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) in Thailand, The richest Thais earn 14.7 times more
than the poorest [and the] bottom 60 percent of the populations share of the
income is only 25 percent.43 In Lao PDR during 19922002 (most recent
available data), while the incidence of poverty has declined and the poor are
getting less poor on average, the share of the poorest quintile in national
consumption also fell from 9.6 per cent to eight per cent. This suggests an
increase in inequality during that period. A key feature of Southeast Asian
poverty is the rural/urban divide. In the case of Indonesia extreme poverty is
more pronounced in rural areas, as shown by the rural and urban poverty
gap ratios and Gini indices. Inequality has increased in both rural and urban
areas in the country but, given a concentration of the richest people in urban
centres, inequality is most pronounced in these areas.44
In contrast, in the view of the World Bank Country Director for Viet Nam
Ajay Chhibber in 2008, that countrys signicant progress on poverty
reduction has been based upon a combination of spectacular growth with a
limited increase in inequality (the Gini coecient increased from 0.34 in 1993
to 0.36 in 2006).45 However, the UNDP Viet Nam notes that:
Maintaining the current pace of economic growth is crucial, but it is not
enough. Growth must come with equity and must include all regions and
groups in the country. The majority of the poor in Viet Nam are isolated
74
geographically, ethnically, linguistically, socially and economically. Experience

in other countries shows that the real benets of growth touch these
disadvantaged groups little, if at all.46
With respect to Cambodia the UNDP points out that in 2010, although
poverty has fallen signicantly over the past 13 years, the benets of growth
have not been equally distributed between urban and rural populations; the
average rural poverty rate is 35 per cent, much higher than the urban rate of
22 per cent and the Phnom Penh rate of one per cent. Over the same period,
the share of the poorest quintile has decreased from 8.5 per cent to 6.6 per
cent, much below the CMDG target of 11 per cent.47
Hunger
Poverty reduction does not automatically result in an improved nutrient
dietary intake and relief from hunger. The proportion of underweight children
under the age of ve was reduced from 37 per cent in 1990 to 25 per cent in
2007.48 The proportion of Southeast Asias total population that is undernourished stood at 24 per cent in 199092, declining to 15 per cent in 200406.
Viet Nam has seen a marked decline in child malnourishment, with the
prevalence of underweight children under ve years of age down from
41 per cent in 1990 to 20.6 per cent in 2008.49 Lao PDR has also made major
strides in reducing food poverty and cutting the number of months villagers
went without sucient rice. Despite this, roughly 37 per cent of children
younger than ve years of age are underweight and 40 per cent suer from
chronic malnutrition (stunting).50 In Burma 10 per cent of households have
insucient money to meet their food needs and 32 per cent cannot cover the
cost of their basic food and non-food needs. According to a 2007 study, the
prevalence of moderately underweight children is 34 per cent. It is slightly
higher for rural than urban areas at 35 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively
and is higher for children from poor than non-poor households at 38 per cent
and 32 per cent, respectively. There is no signicant dierence between
girls and boys in terms of prevalence of moderate malnutrition.51
Employment
Following the global nancial and economic crisis and the impact of food
and energy crises, the proportion of undernourished people amongst the
population of Southeast Asia remained 15 per cent in 2008. Employment and
access to decent work is vital. The proportion of employed people living
below $1.25 (ppp) a day as a percentage of total employment in Southeast
Asia was cut from 36 per cent to 17 per cent over the decade 19872007, and
fell again to 15.2 per cent in 2008. However, many more workers were pushed
into vulnerable employment by the crisis. Women are particularly vulnerable.
In Southeast Asia in 2008, women accounted for 64.8 per cent of ownaccount and contributing family workers in total employment compared with
57.7 per cent for men.52
75
NEIL RENWICK
Southeast Asias
MDG1
trajectory to 2015 and beyond
Economic growth
Given the harnessing of the regions economies to the destiny of the global
economy, it is important to assess the prospects for global growth as the
principal driver of Southeast Asian poverty reduction through 2015. The
ASEAN10 have demonstrated renewed growth since the 200809 crisis, albeit
at a signicantly reduced rate of 1.3 per cent in 2009.53 Signicantly, the
forecast growth rate for Southeast Asias real GDP growth in 2010 is sturdy at
5.1 per cent (see Table 4).
Global real GDP is forecast to grow by 2.7 per cent in 2010 and by another
3.2 per cent in 2011.54 Exports to global markets, especially those of the
developed and emerging economies, are prioritised as instruments of growth and
hence of sustained (and sustainable) poverty reduction. However, the global
pitch notwithstanding, with the developing economies growth still struggling in
mid-2010, Southeast Asias poverty reduction trajectory is wedded to a renewed
reliance on regional demand as a major source of growth. Asia should see itself
as not only a producer and exporter of its goods and services, but also as a
consumer.55 Solid global growth is expected to be backed by strong growth in
this region driven by the Chinese economy, a reliance not without its own
pitfalls, the new ASEANChina Free Trade Area notwithstanding.
Basic needs
For the poorest and most in need, global and regional growth rates are a
mere rareed abstraction when faced with the reality of being unable to meet
their own and their families basic needs. In meeting basic needs food security
is an obvious imperative. The global food crisis in 2008 refocused the worlds
TABLE 4. Southeast Asia real
Southeast Asia
Brunei Darussalam
Cambodia
Indonesia
Lao PDR
Malaysia
Burma
Philippines
Singapore
Thailand
Viet Nam
GDP
growtha
2008
2009b
2010c
4.0
71.9
6.7
6.1
7.9
4.6
2.0
3.8
1.1
2.5
6.2
0.6
70.5
0.0
4.5
5.4
71.7
2.0
0.9
7 2.0
72.3
5.3
5.1
0.6
4.0
5.5
6.0
5.0
3.1
3.5
7.0
4.0
5.8
Notes: aCalculations are based on GDP gures at market prices in US dollars in 2007 (at 2000 prices) used as
weights to calculate the regional and sub-regional growth rates; bEstimates; cForecasts (as of 15 April 2010).
Source: Adapted from ESCAP, Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacic 2010: Sustaining
Recovery and Dynamism for Inclusive Development, Bangkok: ESCAP, 2010, p 43.
76
attention on food security. Malnutrition aects over 50 per cent of the

worlds population. Even before the food and economic crises, hunger was on
the rise. Studies show that a one per cent rise in per capita agricultural
output led to a 1.6 per cent rise in incomes of the poorest 20 per cent of
people.56 In Southeast Asia this is epitomised by insecurities over rice, a
strategic commodity in Southeast Asiait is critical for the regions caloric
intake and also iconic; prices have been rising since 2004 but accelerated
from late 2007, rising 61 per cent in one month alone (April 2008).57 This
generated inationary pressures, reducing the real incomes of poor people as
a result of higher food prices.58 A UN High Level Task Force on the Global
Food Security Crisis was established in April 2008. Southeast Asian
governments have been investigating the potential for combining Viet Nams
rice processing experience with Cambodias rice production to help boost
shipments of Cambodian rice and to stabilise prices.
Employment
Agriculture. Despite signicant urbanisation and industrialisation, agriculture
remains very important in Southeast Asia. The agricultural sector is most
prominent in the GDP of Lao PDR (50.2 per cent), Burma (42.9 per cent) and
Cambodia (33.1 per cent), with Viet Nam (20.2 per cent), the Philippines (19.1
per cent) and Indonesia (15 per cent) forming a second tier in which agriculture
is signicant; and Thailand (9.3 per cent) and Malaysia (7.7 per cent) a third
tier where it accounts for a much smaller proportion of GDP.59 As noted earlier,
there is a strong association between agriculture and poverty. While the
numbers of people employed in agriculture have declined, the incidence of
poverty in agricultural households is high, often many times higher than in
non-agricultural sectors. In Lao PDR the government sets agricultures share
of GDP in 200708 at 29.5 per cent, rising to 30.4 per cent in 200809 and
estimates it at 29 per cent for 200910, while industry has hovered between 27.5
per cent, 24.9 per cent and 25 per cent, with signicant growth in the services
sector at 43 per cent, 38.4 per cent and 45.5 per cent. Laos rural upland people
are still among the poorest in the country. This vertical inequality is
compounded by horizontal inequality insofar as many ethnic groups are
concentrated in the upland areas. The rural upland poor experience rice decits
for four months in a normal year. At the end of September 2009 the southern
part of the Lao PDR was hit by Typhoon Ketsana, which aected some 250
000 people.60 Poverty is prevalent among small farms, where market failures
prevail and subsistence production is the norm.61
Burma exemplies the wider regional experience. A higher proportion of
poor individuals working in agriculture is landless (31.8 per cent) compared
with non-poor individuals working in agriculture (22 per cent).62 In response
to this Gaiha et al conclude in their 2006 study that:
Some key elements of a pro-poor growth strategy in a rapidly globalising
environment include: a credible and sound macro policy regime; an increase in
agricultural productivity to sustain overall growthespecially in less-favoured
77
NEIL RENWICK
areas with a heavy concentration of poor people; eective land rights for
women; diversication of rural economies through non-farm opportunities; and
easier access to markets, credit and other nancial services by disadvantaged
groups (such as tribal peoples and women). Transitional or incremental
institutional reforms, on the other hand, may pave the way for deeper and more
extensive reforms over a longer period.63
Migrants. Migration is categorised as regular or irregular, with migrants

employed in formal and informal economies. Informal economies are
signicant in Southeast Asia. In Thailand 33 per cent of the 42 million workers
are in the formal economy comprised of salaried jobs and sizeable enterprises
and 66 per cent in the family farms, casual labour and petty business that make
up the informal economy.64 The ILO estimates that 68 per cent of Indonesians
work in the informal sector. Foreign migration is a critical factor, with some
economies such as Malaysia and Singapore heavily reliant on this workforce.
For example, there are an estimated 2.2 million foreign workers in Malaysia.
The high dependence on foreign migrant labour acts to absorb the impact of
unemployment on workers. A number of adverse regional practices aect
migrant workers, mainly, though not exclusively, foreign nationals. These
include cuts in, or non-payment of, wages, reductions in working days and fewer
opportunities for overtimeall with a proportionately greater impact on
foreign migrant workers; government policies to encourage employers to
retrench migrant workers rst or to substitute them with unemployed nationals;
and the return of unemployed migrants to their countries of origin, driven,
in part, by evidence of policies to speed up the deportation of irregular
migrants introduced by governments such as Malaysia.65
Gender. Women in Southeast Asia are disproportionately more likely to be
aected by poverty.66 The majority of the regions low-waged, low-skilled
and temporary workers are women, who are highly vulnerable to downturns
in the main export sectors. Many are non-unionised or are irregular migrants
vulnerable to abuse; and they often carry the additional weight of homeworking pressures. The global economic crisis exposed the vulnerability of
women in this region. In Thailand evidence showed that in the period
between May 2008 and May 2009 women experienced underemployment,
employment shift or lay o, reduced wages and earnings, exploitation, and
cheating by employers . . . the crisis has had adverse implications on both the
physical and mental health of women. There have been increases in women
related crimes such as prostitution, drug abuse and tracking, rape,
pornography, domestic violence.67
Societal security
Insecurities can derive from cultural practices, gender, land ownership systems,
access to education and social welfare opportunities, ruralurban divides,
ethnic, racial and religious tensions, class, the status of indigenous peoples,
urbanisation and the rise of megacities, and natural disasters such as the 2004
78
tsunami and Cyclone Nagri in 2008. Here we will consider two consequences of
societal conicts that impinge upon poverty in the region: rst, internally
displaced people (IDPs) in Southeast Asia; and second, landmine injuries. The
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimates the number of
IDPs from conicts within Southeast Asian counties involving inter-communal
violence or separatist struggles by rebel groups and counter-insurgency
operations by security forces at: Indonesia 70 000200 000; Burma at least 470
000 and the Philippines 125 00088 000. In Indonesia, IDPs hide in the jungle,
IDP families are afraid to return to their homes for fear of renewed communal
violence or are segregated into Christians and Muslims; and those in camps or
relocation sites are struggling to recover without access to basic services or
sucient support. In Burma government forces have displaced thousands of
people in their pursuit of insurgent ethnic armed groups. IDMCs assessment is
that, between 1996 and 2009 over 3500 villages and hiding sites were destroyed,
forcibly relocated or otherwise emptied. IDPs in eastern Myanmar [Burma]
were in 2009 either gathered in relocation sites (128 000), dispersed in hiding
areas in the jungle (111 000), or in areas administered by ceasere groups (231
000). The number of IDPs grew in 2009. The IDMC notes that, while some
casual labour and a little local aid helps some in the camps and sites, those in
hiding were largely without formal support or livelihoods, with security forces
destroying their crops and pursuing them into the jungle. Humanitarian
agencies are banned from directly assisting IDPs.68
Poverty and meeting MDG1 is also about addressing the long-term legacies
of conict, not least the fatalities and injuries from landmines and other
unexploded munitions. This is underlined by the declaration of a Ninth
Cambodian MDG of De-mining by signing the Peoples Treaty to Ban Cluster
Munitions. There have been more than 60 000 casualties in Cambodia since
1979. Viet Nam Landmine Monitor analysis recorded 1545 mine or explosive
remnants of war (ERW) casualties (589 killed and 956 injured) from 1999 to
2008. People with war-related disabilities are believed to account for
26 per cent of persons with disabilities. Burma continues to have landmines
laid, with both government and rebel forces alleging the other to be
responsible. There are estimated to have been 2325 casualties (175 killed,
2002 injured and 148 unknown) from 1999 to 2008. The vast majority of
those killed and injured by landmines and other devices throughout
Southeast Asia are the poor going about their daily livesfarming, fetching
water, travelling between villages, collecting woodalthough there are
reports from Burma of at least two civilians injured by antipersonnel mines in
2008 during atrocity de-mining, ie the premeditated use of forced labour for
mine clearance.69 Casualties also arise from scavenging for metal to sell when
prices are high, an activity usually associated with the poor but which has
been known to include professionals such as teachers.
Environmental insecurities
The challenge of green growth is also substantial. The range of
environmental factors inuencing poverty, hunger and employment includes
79
NEIL RENWICK
climate change; air, water and land pollution; deforestation; biofuels; shery
depletion and sustainable land use. The regions highest carbon dioxide
(CO2) emissions (in metric tonnes per capita, no date given) are recorded by
Brunei Darussalam: 24, Singapore: 12.2, Malaysia: seven and Thailand:
4.3.70 ESCAP states that the clearing of tropical rainforests is responsible for
roughly 20 per cent of the annual anthropogenic carbon emissions in its
membership region.71 The poorest in Southeast Asias societies are forced by
sheer weight of their circumstances to live in areas with uncertain rainfall,
steep slopes and poor soils, where land is marginal, low in natural resources
and dicult to farm. Typically these are mountainous and highland areas, or
semi-arid zones with acute problems of water scarcity. They are often remote
with very limited access to markets, infrastructure and services.72
Deforestation and clearances hit the poorest hardest. While Viet Nam
recorded a net increase in forested area between 1990 and 2005, there has been
a net decrease in forested area in (ascending order): Malaysia; Lao PDR;
Thailand; Cambodia; Indonesia; and the Philippines. Between 1997 and 2000
Indonesia lost 3.5 million hectares of forest annually. Similarly, while over
50 per cent of Thailand was covered by forest in the 1970s, two decades later
this had decreased to 25 per cent under the pressures of logging (legal and
illegal) and agricultural resettlement. Despite government plans to retain
40 per cent of land for forest through large-scale reforestation and a 1988 ban
on logging, 1.4 million hectare of forest were lost between the logging ban and
this reclassication, and another 0.3 million since.73 Again, inequality is a key
factor. Land ownership is often heavily concentrated and the majority of poor
rural households survive by cultivating a small parcel of land. The poorest of
them are either landless, dependent on piecemeal work as labourers, or else
farm tiny plots that are inadequate for feeding a family.74
What more needs to be done?
Through a signicant regional collaborative commitment between intergovernmental, state and civil societal and community-based organisations,
there has been a concerted eort to achieve MDG1 in Southeast Asia over the
past decade. Normative policy regimes (norms, rules, regulations) operate at
each tier of activity constructed from the cumulative agreements, statements,
declarations and commitments delivered and the myriad of summits and
ancillary meetings held around the world since 2000. At the global level the
MDG system centres on the various UN agencies as well as on institutions
such as the World Bank, ILO and World Health Organisation (WHO).
Southeast Asias work towards MDG1 has been contextualised by the global
policy regime providing a procedural normativity for co-ordinated and
concerted action on monitoring, evaluation and accountability.
In addition to this global regime and the individual AMC poverty-reduction
strategies such as Thailands MDG-Plus or Viet Nams inequality-reduction
focus, Southeast Asias success reects the regional organisational response.
Here we are talking about trilateral leadership by the UNESCAP, ASEAN and
the ADB in conjunction with the regional and country oces of UN agencies
80
such as UNDP, Unicef, UNCTAD, FAO, UNAIDS, ILO and WHO, as well as the
World Bank, IFAD and IMF. As at the global and national levels, this
institutional infrastructure works with a wide range of development partners
including national agencies (DFID, JICA, AusAid and USAID); specialist
research institutes; and NGOs, CSOs and community-based organisations
(CBOs).75 Multilateral co-ordination takes place through regional summits,
joint technical meetings and initiatives such as the East and Southeast Asia
MDG Forum initiated by ESCAP, UNDP and ADB. The overall response to
MDG1 is, necessarily, multi-sectoral. However, at the risk of over-simplication, it has two main instruments to achieve the MDG1 targets: rst,
promoting economic growth; and second, providing social protection.
For example, ADBs annual lending volume is normally around $6 billion,
with technical assistance totalling around $180 million76. ADB made loans from
its Countercyclical Support Facility for scal stimulus support during the
global crisis in 2009, eg $500 million each to Viet Nam and the Philippines, and
also expanded its trade nance facilitation programme. Further support is
provided via the Concessional Asian Development Fund, e.g. a 2009 $1 billion
loan to Viet Nam to continue policy reforms that overcome the impact of the
global crisis and meet the remaining challenges of poverty reduction and foster
socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic growth.77 Turning to ASEAN, the organisations primary objective is to meet the targets of
MDG1 through inclusive and sustainable regional economic growth facilitated
by closer co-ordinated co-operation between AMCs through regional integration. The aim is to establish an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015, as
well as an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC). This is based on the AEC
Blueprint, Initiative for ASEAN Integration (II) (2000), IAI 2nd Work Plan
(200915) and the Vientiane Action Programme (VAP) 200410. Of central
relevance to MDG1 and afterwards is ASEANs Vision 2020 to promote equitable
economic development and reduce poverty and economic inequalities across
the region. In this, ASCC would be a community of caring societies in which
development and enhancement of human resources is a key strategy for
employment generation, alleviating poverty and socio-economic disparities,
and ensuring economic growth with equity.78 In practical terms an important
co-ordinating element is the IAI Development Cooperation Forum (IDCF) held
in 2002, 2007, 2010 and the co-operation between the ASEAN6 and CLMV
countries.
Warr and McClean have argued that, following the lead of Thailand,
countries in Southeast Asia should aim to transform the MDGs into a oor
instead of a ceiling for human development.79 To do so, promise for the
longer-term rests with addressing a long and complex menu of issues. Briey,
these include: meaningful employment and equitable income; security of
supply and price stability in rice; more robust civil rights for migrant workers
in formal and informal sectors; sustained empowerment of womens
economic, social and political rights; increased access to health and
education; renewed commitment to human rights provisions for IDPs;
policing of deforestation and enhanced climate change policies; anti-demining torture and support for mines casualties; and good governance
81
NEIL RENWICK
(including anti-corruption) and political and industrial democracy. Action to

deliver on these can come through a broader access to micronance; a
widening adoption of village banks and a strengthening of fair trade
agreements with producers; encouragement of SouthSouth learning for
enhanced food security, building on initiatives such as the Investment Forum
for Food Security in Asia and the Pacic held in Manila in July 2010 and
particularly establishing a regional food reserve or Food Bank along the
principles of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
Food Bank;80 extension of health insurance to enhance access to
healthcare;81 continued commitment to the empowerment of women,
especially at the community level, for example through assistance for
grassroots organisations such as the National Network of Informal Workers
(PATAMABA) in the Philippines providing human development services and
socioeconomic assistance organised by women, for women;82 stronger social
protection for migrant workers and informal economy workers in times of
economic downturn; and the rigorous protection of human rights for IDPs,
which may be enhanced by the new ASEAN Human Rights Commission.
The majority, if not all, of the Southeast Asian states will meet the targets
set under MDG1. But the evidence clearly shows that there remain substantial
underlying challenges still to be met that will endure beyond 2015. National
and regional growth strategies, stimulus packages and social protection
initiatives take us only so far in overcoming these challenges. They are, in
important respects, intimately tied-in to the GVCs at the heart of the web that
is the contemporary global economy. To aect major structural change in the
interests of longer-term human security, poverty reduction and elimination of
hunger, there must be a more robust pro-poor approach by governments and
communities to harnessing GVCs to these objectives.
GVCs inhabit virtually every sector of the Southeast Asian economy, with
lead rms (usually, though far from exclusively, from developed economies)
strategically placed to maximise their control and prots within the webs of
producers they spin across the globe. Whether the chains are producerdriven or buyer-driven, What distinguishes lead rms from non-lead rms
is that they control access to major resources (such as product design, new
technologies, brand names or consumer demand) that generate the most
protable returns. It is the locus of lead rm control that is critical to
maximising its share of prots generated by the chain. Large manufacturing
lead rms control the producer-driven GVCs at the point of production
through the sheer scale and volume and technological value-added involved.
The main leverage in buyer-driven GVCs is exercised by lead rms at the
design and retail stages. In buyer-led chains prots come from combinations
of high-value research, design, sales, marketing and nancial services that
allow the retailers, designers and marketers to act as strategic brokers in
linking overseas factories and traders with product niches in their main
consumer markets.83
In Southeast Asia buyer-led GVCs include apparel, agri-food, tourism and
consumer electronics, while producer-led GVCs include motor vehicles and
motor cycles. Economies such as Singapores have their own lead rms
82
operating regional value chains. SouthSouth learning plays a signicant role

in addressing VCD. Key messages of local empowerment in GVCs in Latin
America are that entry barriers:
. . . must not be so high as to exclude the poor, but they must be suciently high
to allow participants to gain meaningfully from engaging in the chain;
interventions have overemphasised the role of the poor as producers as the
main means of reducing rural poverty. In fact, the poor engage with value
chains at all nodes as producers, intermediaries, workers and consumers;
analysis of the enabling environment, the regulatory structures in which value
chains operate, is essential. It is not unusual for the main impediment to poor
people engaging with value chains to be the state that purports to represent
them.84
Work towards VCD is evident throughout Southeast Asia. For example, the
World Vegetable Centre supports pro-poor vegetable value chains in greater
Mekong sub-region countries. In Cambodia Prahok producers have formed
an association to expand their market opportunities. The World Cocoa
Foundation assists knowledge transfers and skills development for Southeast
Asias cocoa farmers. In Thailand market analysis and knowledge is
enhanced for producers through the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)
value chain. In this GAP initiative 2000 farmers in western Thailand signed-up
to EUREGAP certication (the worlds most widely implemented farm
certication scheme, later renamed GLOBALGAP). This was done to enhance
their competitiveness in the European market in four productsokra,
asparagus, baby corn and chilli peppersby conforming to common
standards required by European supermarkets and their suppliers.
A signicant enabling instrument being developed in the region through
agencies such as the FAOs Interdepartmental Working Group on Dierentiated Quality is Geographical Indications (GIs). According to FAO:
. . . this approach could lead to rural development initiatives that led to the
denition and protection of products that have quality that is linked to their
geographical origin and allowed some value addition to be implemented and
captured at the local producers level of the marketing chain while also
strengthening the local social network around a common project. The concept
of quality linked to origin also allows the preservation of local resources: ie
traditions, know-how, and natural resources. In this initiative the code of
practice (CoP) of the product, dened and implemented by producers, was the
main development tool.85
Examples of GI include the Lao Coee Association working to extend

organic certication to cover a larger area of plantations to produce
progressively more and more organically certied coee, and labelling the
Bolovens Plateau as a geographical indication for Lao coee. The GI
labelling could help to open new markets but mostly it is expected to add
more recognition and so more value to the product. The day when Lao coee
will be well-known and famous worldwide, the Lao Peoples Democratic
Republic will acquire a more attractive image. Coee could boost tourism.86
83
NEIL RENWICK
Nevertheless, the process is not always smooth. For example, the Phu Quoc
Fish Sauce Producing Association in Viet Nam has struggled to protect
participants rights, unify and manage sh sauce production, and build a
quality management of the GI of its 85 household producer members.
According to a Rural Development Centre representative, conicts have
arisen among association members, who are either suppliers or non-suppliers
for the Knorr Company (Knorr being a brand name of the global
corporation Unilever), which bought the right to use the name Phu Quoc,
built a $1 million bottling plant on the island and marketed it in Viet Nam,
sparking a dispute between traditionalists who questioned why a multinational was marketing the sauce and producers who saw this as a more
eective way to sell their product.87
The role to be played by chain interventions from external agencies in the
enabling environment is evident across the region, such as in the support of
Doi Tung Coee by the Mae Fah Luang Foundation under the patronage
of the late Princess Mother of HM King Bhumibol of Thailand. In an area of
poverty where opium used to be grown, new plantations of Arabica coee
are now providing good income to producers. The Foundation provided the
plantation material and equipment and it markets the products and
organises the verication of product conformity. However, the investments
in the coee value chain are now funded by the revenues from sales and the
system is becoming autonomous. GIs have the potential to make a signicant
contribution to community empowerment. This is evident in the impact of
GI certication of forestry products. For Marija Spirovska, FAO, Thailand,
It is an empowering process because it makes people realise the uniqueness
of their culture, the wealth of their forests, and the beauty of their
landscape.88
In addition to the role of independent facilitators/enablers, three further
inter-related factors deserve noting in the active promotion of pro-poor
strategies for MDG1 and VCD in Southeast Asia (and elsewhere in developing
states): social enterprises (SEs), community-based action (CBA) and nance.
Dacanay has argued that SE business philosophy is distributive and not-forprot and its commercial rationale is to meet the needs of the poor and
marginalised and double or triple their incomes. SEs can, therefore, be
eectively harnessed to poverty alleviation and MDGs. SE strategies are
empowering. These enterprises represent participation by the poor and
marginalised sectors as owners, decision makers and stakeholders and
include KOOL-NE, an organic rice joint venture between farmers and an NGO
in the Philippines and Pekerti Nusantara in Indonesia (Pengembangan
Kerajinan Rakyat Indonesia, meaning Indonesian Peoples Handicraft
Foundation).89 The largest of Southeast Asias community-driven development projects is Indonesias National Programme for Community Empowerment (PNPM Mandiri), due for completion around March 2013. The
funding is nancing capacity building and infrastructure improvements in
about 1500 villages in four provinces of Jambi, Lampung, Riau and South
Sumatra. The project targets improved access to services and infrastructure
in poor villages, empowering communities to identify and carry out
84
development plans with block grants directly allocated to villages for priority
infrastructure investments. As with many of the SEs, CBA such as PNPM or
PATAMABA in the Philippines focus on the empowerment of women and the
promotion of gender equality by undertaking gender audits and separate
womens meetings and actively providing training, skills and knowledge as
well as much-needed nance.
Access to nance remains critical to VCD, SEs and CBA. Funding is available
from a range of sources: business development associations helping the poor
gain access to private social investment capital to establish their own lead
rms; and SE programmes oering seeding grants to increase the value-added
of basic commodities by turning them into sophisticated products. Pro-poor
nancial interventions in the GVCs can also come from not-for-prot
organisations such as the Population and Community Development
Association (the largest NGO in Thailand). This has provided and facilitated
the delivery of an integrated package of nance and technical assistance in the
development of red jasmine organic rice, which was then sold in their chain of
restaurants.90 In addition, across Southeast Asia, BRAC (a development NGO
that seeks to alleviate poverty by empowering the poor to bring about change
in their own lives) organises poor, landless and marginalised people, mostly
women, into Village Organisations (VOs). The VOs serve as forums where
people can collectively address the principal structural impediments to their
development path, receive awareness training, credit support, savings facilities
and get the opportunity to mobilize economic and social power.91
Conclusions
This article has argued that the anticipated attainment of MDG1 by the
majority of Southeast Asian states and the pursuit of MDG-Plus by some of
these states notwithstanding, poverty and inequality will remain a continuing
challenge in this region and across the global South. It has presented evidence
to illustrate continuing challenges facing the peoples of Southeast Asia in
terms of poverty reduction, inequality and social exclusion. The hypothesis
put forward argued that the core challenge is to harness GVCs for sustainable
human development and that, to achieve this, GVCs need to be related more
robustly to the needs and interests of the peoples and communities in
Southeast Asia and globally. This requires governments and communities to
be empowered with the tools to more eectively take advantage of MDGs.
This can be achieved by increasing control and maximising economic rents
through a range of community-based initiatives backed by civil societal,
governmental and inter-governmental interventions.
Notes
1 United Nations, Keeping the Promise: a forward-looking review to promote an agreed action agenda to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015Report of the Secretary-General, 2010.
2 Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacic (ESCAP), A Future Within Reach: Regional
Partnerships for the Millennium Development Goals in Asia and the Pacic, Bangkok: ESCAP/ADB/
UNDP, April 2008, p 11.
85
NEIL RENWICK
3 R Lambert, CBI press release of a speech to Japan Society and Japanese Chamber of Commerce,
London, 1 April, 2008.
4 D Dollar & A Kraay, Growth is Good for the Poor, World Bank Development Research Group,
Washington, DC, March 2000. A complete version of this preliminary paper was published as D
Dollar & A Kraay, Growth is good for the poor, Journal of Economic Growth, 7(3), 2002, pp 195225.
See also A Kraay, When is growth pro-poor? Evidence from a panel of countries, Journal of
Economics, 80, 2006, pp 198227.
5 P Collier, The Bottom Billion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p 11.
6 Illustrative examples of this common discourse include ESCAP, A Future Within Reach, p 3; ESCAP,
Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in an Era of Global Uncertainty: AsiaPacic Regional
Report 2009/10, Bangkok: ESCAP, 2009, p 2; United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report
2008, New York: UN, 2008, p 5; R Gaiha, K Imai & MA Nandhi, Millennium Development Goal of
Halving Poverty in the Asia and the Pacic Region: Progress, Prospects and Priorities, Occasional
Papers 1, Rome: IFAD, 2006, p 7; and Asian Development Bank (ADB), Asian Development Outlook
2010, Manila: ADB, 2010.
7 ESCAP, A Future Within Reach, p 3.
8 UN, Final Outcome of the International Conference on Financing for Development, New York: UN,
2002, p 2.
9 Dollar & Kraay, Growth is good for the poor, abstract.
10 M Ravallion, Inequality is Bad for the Poor, WPS3677, Washington, DC: World Bank Development
Research Group, August 2005.
11 A. Bauer & M Thant (eds), Poverty and Sustainable Development in Asia: Impacts and Responses to the
Global Economic Crisis, Manila: ADB, 2010, p vii.
12 ESCAP, A Future Within Reach.
13 P Dicken, Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy, London: Sage, 2007.
14 R Kaplinsky & M Morris, A Handbook for Value Market Chain Research, Ottawa: IDRC, 2001, p 4.
15 A. Stamm, Value Chains for Development Policy, Eschborn: GTZ, 2004.
16 United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, New York: UN, 2009, p 6.
17 United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, New York: UN, 2007; and UN,
Millennium Development Goals Report 2008, New York: UN, 2008.
18 World BankIMF, Global Monitoring Report 2010, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010; and World
Bank, Prospects for the World Economy, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010.
19 UN, Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p 12.
20 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2009: Economic
CrisesImpacts and Lessons Learned, Rome: FAO, October 2009.
21 European Commission, Malnutrition in the Spotlight, Brussels: European Commission, 26 November
2009.
22 International Labour Organisation (ILO), Global Employment Trends, Geneva: ILO, January 2010, pp
18, 22.
23 ADB, Asian Development Outlook 2010, pp 34.
24 ESCAP, 2010 Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacic: Sustaining Recovery and Dynamism for
Inclusive Development, Bangkok: ESCAP, 2010, p vi.
25 J Thurlow & P Wobst, Not all growth is equally good for the poor: the case of Zambia, Journal of
African Economics, 15(4), 2006, pp 603625.
26 ESCAP, Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacic 2010, p viii.
27 S Wiggins, Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction: Scoping Study for IDRC, London: Overseas
Development Institute, 2005; and O Memedovic & A Shepherd, Agri-food Value Chains and Poverty
Reduction: Overview of Main Issues, Trends and Experiences, Vienna: United Nations Industrial
Development Organisation, Research and Statistics Branch, 2009.
28 ESCAP, AsiaPacic Economic and Social Survey 2006: Energising the Global Economy, Bangkok:
ESCAP, 2006; and P Warr & K McClean, Poverty Reduction and Social Development in ASEAN: Towards
an ASEAN Roadmap for the Implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, Canberra: ANU, 2007.
29 ESCAP, 2010 AsiaPacic Economic and Social Survey, p 11.
30 Association of South East Asian Nations, ASEANStats, Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat, April 2010; Nikkei,
Asian economy at a glance: development and challenges, presentation to the 15th International
Conference Future of Asia, 21 May 2009, at http://e.nikkei.com/e/fr/forum/foa/pdf/Yasuhiro_Gotoe_presen.pdf; and Economy Watch, ASEAN 5 Economic Statistics and Indicators 2009, at http://
www.economywatch.com/economic-statistics/ country/ASEAN-5/
31 ESCAP, AsiaPacic Economic and Social Survey 2006, p vii.
32 Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, Value Chains for DevelopmentAn Introduction to Pro-poor
Value Chains, 6 November 2008, at http://www.kit.nl/smartsite.shtml?id14576; Kaplinsky & Morris,
86
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
A Handbook for Value Market Chain Research; and R Kaplinsky, Globalisation, Industrialisation and
Sustainable Growth: The Pursuit of the Nth rent, IDS Discussion Paper 365, Brighton: IDS, 2008.
UN, Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, pp 67.
Ibid, p 8; and UN, Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, pp 67.
UNDP Cambodia, Trade development for poverty reduction, at http://www.un.o rg.kh/undp/Povertyreduction/Page-2.html; and UNDP Indonesia, Millennium Development Goals in Indonesia, at http://
www.undp.or.id/mdg/.
ESCAP, AsiaPacic Economic and Social Survey 2010, p 33.
UNDP Lao, Millennium Development Goal 1, at http://www.undplao.org/mdgs/ mdgs1.php; and
World Bank Vientiane, Lao PDR Economic Monitor 2008; Lao PDR Monitor 2009, Vientiane: World
Bank Oce, 2008, 2009.
UNDP, Human Development Report 2009: Overcoming BarriersHuman Mobility and Development,
New York: UNDP/Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; and Cambodia Country Page, at http://hdrstats.undp.
org/en/countries/countryfact_sheets/cty_fs_ KHM.html.
H. Jalilian, S Chan, G Reyes, SC Hang, P Dalis & PDorina, The Global Financial Crisis and Developing
Countries: Cambodia, Phnom Penh: CDRI/London: ODI, 2009.
ADB, Asian Development Outlook 2010.
UNDP Cambodia, Trade development for poverty reduction, p 199.
ADB, Poverty in the Philippines: Causes, Constraints and Opportunities, Manila: ADB, 2009, p 3
Global Movement for Children, Inequality Gap Stains Thailands MDG Achievements, 10 May 2010,
Bangkok, at http://www.gmfc.org/en/action-within-the-movement/asia-a-the-pacic/regional-news-inasia-a-the-pacic/316-inequality-gap-stains-thailands-mdg-achievements.
Ibid; UNDP Thailand, Human Security Today and Tomorrow: Thailand Human Development Report
2009, Bangkok: UNDP, May, at http://www.undp.or.th/resources/documents/20100510_2009_Thailand_Human_Development_Report.pdf; UNDP Lao, Millennium Development Goal 1; ESCAP,
Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacic 2009, Bangkok: ESCAP, Section 18, Poverty and
Inequality, 24 March 2009, at http://www.unescap.org/stat/data/syb2009/18-Poverty-and-inequality.asp; and ESCAP, AsiaPacic Economic and Social Survey.
VietNamNet Bridge, Vietnam leads the way in tackling poverty, 16 February 2008, at http://
english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2008/02/768857/.
UNDP Viet Nam, Millennium Development Goals in Viet Nam 2010, at http://www.undp.org.vn/mdgs/
viet-nam-and-the-mdgs/?&languageId1.
UNDP Cambodia, Trade development for poverty reduction.
UN, Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p 12.
S Yamazaki, speech at workshop on national MDG report for 2010, UNDP Cambodia Oce, Phnom
Penh, 2 April 2010, at http://www.undp.org.vn/detail/newsroom/news-details/?contentId3411&language
Id1.
UNDP Lao, Millennium Development Goal11.
Idea International Institute & IHLCA Project Technical Unit, Integrated Household Living Conditions
Survey in Myanmar: MDG-Relevant Information, Quebec City: Idea International Institute/Yangon:
IHLCA Project Technical Unit, pp 2123, at http://www.mm.undp.org/UNDP_Publication_PDF/
IHLCA-MDG%20survey.pdf.
UN, Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, pp 11, 8; and UN, Millennium Development Goals
Report 2008, p 9.
ASEAN, ASEANStats.
World Bank, Prospects for the World Economy, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010.
H Kuroda, ADB president outlines postcrisis development agenda for Asia and the Pacic, press
release, ADB, Manila, 3 May 2010.
European Commision, Malnutrition in the Spotlight, p 39.
M Brahmbhatt & L Christiaensen, Rising Food Prices in East Asia: Challenges and Policy Options,
Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008; and N Lustig, Coping with Rising Food Prices: Policy Dilemmas
in the Developing World, Washington, DC: Centre for Global Development, 2009.
M Figueroa, Impact of rising food prices felt in East Asia, World Bank Blog, 7 April 2008, at http://
blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacic/node/278 1.
FA Uriarte, Poverty Alleviation: Initiatives of the ASEAN Foundation, Jakarta: ASEAN Foundation,
2008.
Reliefweb, Lao PDR: food security in upland provinces in Laos gets further boosting with new
funding from the World Bank and the European Union, World Bank, 10 June 2010, at http://
www.reliefweb.int/rw/rw b.nsf/db900SID/MCOI-86CHDE?OpenDocument; and Reliefweb, GIEWS
Country Briefs: Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Rome: FAO, 11 March 2010, at http://www.
reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/ db900SID/MYAI-83J5VR?OpenDocument.
87
NEIL RENWICK
61 S Setboonsarng, P Leung & S Adam, Rice Contract Farming in Lao PDR: Moving from Subsistence to
Commercial Agriculture, Discussion Paper 90, Tokyo: ADB Institute, 2008, at http://www.adbi.org/
discussionpaper/2008/02/25/2492.ri ce.contract.farming.in.lao.pdr/.
62 Idea International Institute & IHLCA Project Technical Unit, Integrated Household Living Conditions
Survey in Myanmar, p 9.
63 R. Gaiha, K Imai & MA. Nandhi, Millennium Development Goal of Halving Poverty in the Asia and the
Pacic Region: Progress, Prospects and Priorities, IFAD Occasional Papers 1, Rome: IFAD, 2006, p 7.
64 UNDP Thailand, Human Security Today and Tommorrow.
65 International Oce of Migration, IOM Policy Brief on the Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on
Migration, March 2009, at http://www.iom.int/ jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/shared/mainsite/
policy_and_research/policy_documents/policy_brief _gfc.pdf.
66 DG Mendoza, Poverty still has a womans face, Inter-Press Service, Manila, 17 February 2010, at
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews50 361.
67 S Paitoonpong, N Akkarakul & S Rodsomboon, Triple Burden: The Impact of the Financial Crisis on
Women in Thailand, Oxfam GB in Thailand, August 2010, p 58, at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/
resources/policy/economic_crisis/downloads/rr_gec_impact_on_thailand_120210.pdf.
68 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, Cycle of Conict and Neglect: Republic of the Philippines
Mindanaos Displacement and Protection Crisis, Geneva: IDMC, October 2009; and IDMC, Internal
Displacement in South and South-East Asia, Geneva: IDMC, 2010.
69 International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Landmine Monitor Report 2009: Toward a Mine-Free
World, at http://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/publications/display?urllm/2009/.
70 ESCAP, A Future Within Reach, p 19.
71 ESCAP, AsiaPacic Economic and Social Survey 2010, p 136.
72 IFAD, Rural poverty in the Asia and the Pacic region, IFAD webpage, 2007, at http://www.ifad.org/
operations/projects/regions/pi/index.htm.
73 UNDP Thailand, Human Security Today and Tommorrow, p 27.
74 IFAD, Rural poverty in the Asia and the Pacic region.
75 JM Brinkerho, SC Smith & H Teegen (eds), NGOs and the Millennium Development Goals: Citizen
Action to Reduce Poverty, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007.
76 International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Agricultural and Rural Development for Reducing
Poverty and Hunger in Asia: In Pursuit of Inclusive and Sustainable Growth, Washington, DC, IFPRI,
2007, at http://www.ifpri.org/publication/ agricultural-and-rural-development-reducing-poverty-andhunger-asia.
77 ADB, ADB approves $100 million loan to aid poverty reduction in Viet Nam, press release, Manila, 15
October, 2009.
78 ASEAN, Initiative for ASEAN Integration and Narrowing the Development Gap, Jakarta: ASEAN
Secretariat, 2010.
79 Warr & McClean, Poverty Reduction and Social Development in ASEAN, p 2.
80 ESCAP, Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacic 2009, pp 7778.
81 International Food Policy Research Institute, Health Insurance for the Rural Poor, Washington, DC:
IFPRI, 2010.
82 L Gula, The PATAMABA experience: towards representation and advocacy, paper presented at the
Workshop on Building a Regional Presence in Asia, Mumbai, 2008; RP Ofreneo, Solidarity economy
from the perspective of women homebased workers in Southeast Asia: the alternative to the economics
of empire?, paper presented at the 1st Regional Conference on Community Development, Diliman,
2009; and Ofreneo, Towards fair trade and sustainable livelihood for women informal workers in a
globalising ASEAN, paper presented at the 2nd Asia Pacic Congress of Cooperatives, Diliman, 2008.
83 G Gere & O Memedovic, The Global Apparel Value Chain: What Prospects for Upgrading by
Developing Countries?, Vienna: United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, 2003.
84 J Mitchell, C Coles & J Keane, Upgrading along Value Chains: Strategies for Poverty Reduction in Latin
America, Comercio y Pobreza en Latino America (COPLA) Brieng Paper 2009.
85 FAO, Rural Development and Agrifood Product Quality Linked to Geographical Origin in Asia:
Proceedings from the Technical Consultation 810 June 2009, Bangkok, Rome: FAO, 2009.
86 Ibid, p 60.
87 Ibid, p 51; VNA, Phu Quoc island guards a national treasure: sh sauce, 26 March 2007, at http://
www.aseanfood.info/Articles/13005814.pdf; and CorpWatch, VIET NAM: country jolted over
trademark debacle, 8 April 2003, at http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id6369.
88 FAO, Rural Development and Agrifood Product Quality Linked to Geographical Origin in Asia, pp 6566.
89 MLM Dacanay, Social entrepreneurship: an Asian perspective, presentation at the Civil Society
Forum, IMFWB Annual Meeting, 14 September 2006, at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/CSO/
Resources/AM_2006Dacanay.ppt#473,5.
88

90 L Digal (ed), Southeast Asia Regional Conference on Agricultural Value Chain Financing, proceedings
of conference held 1214 December 2007, Kuala Lumpur: Asian Productivity Organization/ FAO,
2009.
91 MA Saleque, An eective way to integrate small-scale farmers in the value chain: the experience of
BRAC, in ibid, p 51.
Notes on contributor
Neil Renwick is Professor of Global Security at Coventry University. He has
written extensively on issues in Chinese politics, foreign relations and
security; global security, critical human security; the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation; China and Africa; Northeast Asian international relations and
security; terrorism and counter-terrorism; pandemic threats (HIV/AIDS);
identity politics; and global political economy.
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Third World Quarterly

Millennium Development Goal 1: poverty,

Professor of Global Development, Department of International Studies and

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2011, pp 6589

Millennium Development Goal 1:

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

United Nations institutions such as ESCAP, UNMDG and the International

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

TABLE 1. Number of undernourished persons in the world

Number of undernourished persons (millions)

Percentage of world population

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

TABLE 2. Poverty in Southeast Asia

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US$1.25 per day (%)

Latest available year

US$2 per day (20002007) (%)

Singapore and Brunei virtually eliminated absolute poverty as they recorded

TABLE 3. Inequality in Southeast Asia

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Richest 10% to poorest 10%b

poverty has become a major constraint in attaining high levels of sustained

POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

geographically, ethnically, linguistically, socially and economically. Experience

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trajectory to 2015 and beyond

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

attention on food security. Malnutrition aects over 50 per cent of the

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Migrants. Migration is categorised as regular or irregular, with migrants

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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(including anti-corruption) and political and industrial democracy. Action to

POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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operating regional value chains. SouthSouth learning plays a signicant role

Examples of GI include the Lao Coee Association working to extend

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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POVERTY, HUNGER AND DECENT WORK IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

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