Chandran Nair speaking today (Sep 11, 2017) at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome in Florence.
I am trying to follow all that's being said at the Summer Academy of the Club of Rome, and it is difficult. Truly, a lot is being said and discussed and much of it is hugely interesting and stimulating. I'll try to report about at least some of the discussions and, today, I was especially impressed by the talk of Chandran Nair, chairman of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT) Institute.
After Yugay's presentation of yesterday, Nair brought another non-Western viewpoint to the school, in this case from Asia. As you see in the picture, above, Nair notes that this region includes a larger population than the rest of the world. He argues strongly that the "West" has lost or is losing its former leadership in culture, science, and politics, and that it is now time for Asia to assert a new role and pick up the sustainability challenge for the whole world.
Nair's presentation was hugely successful with the participants and it generated plenty of questions and discussions, as you see in the pictures below.
Rather than trying to summarize Nair's talk myself, I think I can reproduce a recent paper of him for the World Economic Forum, below. But there is a lot more to learn from Nair's ideas and insights.
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By Chandran Nair
For the World Economic Forum
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After 50 years of progress, it's time for ASEAN's next economic revolution
By Chandran Nair
For the World Economic Forum
This year on 8 August, South-East Asia celebrates an important anniversary: it will be 50 years since the Bangkok Declaration, which established the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), was signed. The organization at the time was much smaller, with a combined population of just 184 million. Member states were largely undeveloped; even Singapore, the wealthiest member, only had a GDP per capita of $600. Indonesia, the largest and poorest member, had a GDP per capita of $56. Almost three-quarters of ASEAN’s population lived in rural areas.
Half a century of population growth and the addition of six new members has tripled ASEAN’s population to 625 million. Only China, India and the European Union have bigger populations. ASEAN countries have also undergone significant development. Singapore is an advanced economy. Thailand and Malaysia are comfortably middle-income. The Philippines has one of the region’s fastest growing economies, helped in part by a highly-educated, English-speaking and globally competitive population. Indonesia’s massive and growing population will make it one of the world’s most important countries, and Vietnam’s rapid growth may make it a model for economic development and poverty alleviation akin to China.
ASEAN’s record of development, poverty alleviation and conflict resolution is a true success story. Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, has called ASEAN a catalyst for peace, a geopolitical miracle and the most successful regional organization after the European Union.
But ASEAN’s economic success has brought with it new challenges. One example is ASEAN’s forests, some of the world’s oldest, which were cleared to make way for agricultural and commodity production: ASEAN’s forest coverage has been reduced from 72% in 1970 to 42% today. More than that, the solutions to these challenges will not come from outside the region. ASEAN’s next 50 years will take place in a wholly new geopolitical, economic and environmental context. The solutions previously used by other countries are no longer feasible in a world marked by increasing interdependence, growing disparities, environmental degradation, climate change and increasingly strict resource constraints.
But there will also be new opportunities to develop even bolder ideas for regional cooperation and coexistence, along with strategies that may be better than what has come before.
