Systemic risks of asean+3 financial integration: challenges, opportunities and the future

There has been rapid de facto trade integration in ASEAN+3 over the past decades, and experts have noted that this leads to greater de facto financial integration. These two therefore have reinforcing effects on each other. However, this cycle brings with it systemic financial risks that could lead to balance of payments crises, capital reversals, and exchange rate variability from current account imbalances which have caused global disruptions historically. The way to keep history from repeating itself is to address these risks. The Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) is one way of doing so, by providing an insurance mechanism that can safeguard the trigger points for said crises. However, the development of de jure integration policies such as this has been slow, much slower than policies that further trade integration, posing a systemic risk. This paper clarifies the implications of this; discusses the possible reasons for this discrepancy; and provides potential solutions that will enable ASEAN+3 to speed up the process of prudent financial integration.

Climate change and its impact on peace and security in Southeast Asia

Climate change is today one of the greatest risks to peace and security, but arguably remains at the margins of policy action amid the loss of trust in multilateral institutions. The impacts of climate change are already felt by local communities in regions on the frontline. While communities have exercised agency to generate local impact and promote trust, the overwhelming impact of climate change necessitates effective state responses, and regional and global cooperation.2 Global cooperation, in turn, needs to better address the challenges to peace and security faced by regions most exposed to the impacts of climate change. Southeast Asia is already experiencing direct climate change impacts from changes in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, ocean warming, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. The subsequent indirect climate change impacts on food and water security, and changes in natural resource exploitation and migration patterns, affect the lives and livelihoods of people and communities across the highly diverse region and threaten its peace and security

CLIMATE CHANGE AND ITS IMPACT ON PEACE AND SECURITY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

Climate change is today one of the greatest risks to peace and security, but arguably remains at the margins of policy action amid the loss of trust in multilateral institutions. The impacts of climate change are already felt by local communities in regions on the frontline. While communities have exercised agency to generate local impact and promote trust, the overwhelming impact of climate change necessitates effective state responses, and regional and global cooperation. Global cooperation, in turn, needs to better address the challenges to peace and security faced by regions most exposed to the impacts of climate change. Southeast Asia is already experiencing direct climate change impacts from changes in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rise, ocean warming, and more frequent and intense extreme weather events. The subsequent indirect climate change impacts on food and water security, and changes in natural resource exploitation and migration patterns, affect the lives and livelihoods of people and communities across the highly diverse region and threaten its peace and security. In Southeast Asia, the cross-cutting impacts of climate change on peace and security can be analysed through the framework of comprehensive security. Comprehensive security is the organising concept of security in the region, integrated and widely reflected in the security lexicon in the ASEAN region and beyond. Unlike the conventional notion of security, which is narrowly defined to mean defending state borders from military attack, comprehensive security is a much broader conceptualisation of security that “[goes] beyond (but does not exclude) the military threats to embrace the political, economic and socio-cultural dimensions.

Por D. Luisa Antonia Fernandez Portocarrero Marquesa de Montesclaros, como madre, y tutora de don Gonçalo Messia Carrillo de Fonseca Marques de la Guardia. Con el Obispo, Dean y Cabildo, y Administradores de rentas dezimales de la Santa Iglesia de Cordou

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Influence of socioeconomic factors on pregnancy outcome in women with structural heart disease

OBJECTIVE: Cardiac disease is the leading cause of indirect maternal mortality. The aim of this study was to analyse to what extent socioeconomic factors influence the outcome of pregnancy in women with heart disease.  METHODS: The Registry of Pregnancy and Cardiac disease is a global prospective registry. For this analysis, countries that enrolled ≥10 patients were included. A combined cardiac endpoint included maternal cardiac death, arrhythmia requiring treatment, heart failure, thromboembolic event, aortic dissection, endocarditis, acute coronary syndrome, hospitalisation for cardiac reason or intervention. Associations between patient characteristics, country characteristics (income inequality expressed as Gini coefficient, health expenditure, schooling, gross domestic product, birth rate and hospital beds) and cardiac endpoints were checked in a three-level model (patient-centre-country).  RESULTS: A total of 30 countries enrolled 2924 patients from 89 centres. At least one endpoint occurred in 645 women (22.1%). Maternal age, New York Heart Association classification and modified WHO risk classification were associated with the combined endpoint and explained 37% of variance in outcome. Gini coefficient and country-specific birth rate explained an additional 4%. There were large differences between the individual countries, but the need for multilevel modelling to account for these differences disappeared after adjustment for patient characteristics, Gini and country-specific birth rate.  CONCLUSION: While there are definite interregional differences in pregnancy outcome in women with cardiac disease, these differences seem to be mainly driven by individual patient characteristics. Adjustment for country characteristics refined the results to a limited extent, but maternal condition seems to be the main determinant of outcome

Disease-free Farm Production in ASEAN: Goal For 2018?

Diseases from farm production have caused great damage to ASEAN and show signs of worsening in the future. To address this, can Singapore aspire to align farm production practices with established international standards when it serves as ASEAN chair in 2018

Manila’s Tariff Move on Imported Rice : Implications for the Region

The Philippines’ removal of quotas on rice imports leads to increased competition, with negative short-term impacts on its farmers and on poorer urban ASEAN consumers. In the long-run, however, these challenges may serve as a strong push to upgrade regional rice production practices.Published versio

New Trends in Humanitarian Assistance – Enticing the Private Sector : The Value Chain Approach

Since the Sulawesi quake and tsunami, ASEAN member states have agreed to increase financial contributions to Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations. However, an alternative framing of HADR is needed to draw enterprises in bridging gaps

Volatility in the rice sector: time for ASEAN to act?

How Thailand and Vietnam – two major rice exporters after India – will react to the latter’s recent rice export ban will depend very much on expectations of how long the ban will last. Should rice exporters in these countries engage in price speculation, global food security can be put at risk. It is time for ASEAN to explore how price speculation in the rice trade can be prevented.Published versio

New Trends in Humanitarian Assistance – The Private Turn in Humanitarian Aid

To bridge funding gaps in humanitarian assistance, states will need to re-examine their roles, relative to the private sector. Humanitarian technologies offer a potential high-volume, low-profit margin sector which can be an entry point for private companies