From:  UNDP-newsroom at undp.org

Corruption Hits Poor the Hardest.

UNDP Report Examines Priority Areas for Tackling Corruption in Asia-Pacific

Jakarta, Indonesia, 12 June 2008—Cleaning up the police, health, education and environment sectors should be a top political priority in the Asia-Pacific region, in order to loosen the stranglehold of corruption on the lives of the poor, according to a new United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report released here today.

The Report, entitled Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives, vividly illustrates how the region’s pervasive ‘petty’ corruption smothers opportunities for the most vulnerable people, limiting their access to education and compromising basic health services. It also provides innovative ways in which communities and governments are striving to fight corruption in Asia, including Indonesia.

The Report was launched by the President of Indonesia, His Excellency Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Director of the Bureau for Policy Development, Olav Kjørven, and the Minister of Development Planning, His Excellency Paskah Suzetta.

The publication quotes President Yudhoyono shortly after his election in 2004: “The eradication of corruption will be my priority over the next five years. We have to eradicate it structurally and culturally…This country will be destroyed if we do not stop the growth of corruption. There needs to be some shock therapy so that the people know that this government is serious about corruption.”

Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives stresses that while anti-corruption efforts too often focus on exposing the ‘big fish’, it is ‘small fry’ corruption —from the salaries of fictitious ‘ghost teachers’ funnelled into the pockets of corrupt officials, to doctors demanding cash payments from poor, pregnant women to deliver their babies, which causes more day-to-day suffering and could severely hamper the Region’s goal of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)— the eight internationally-agreed targets aimed at halving poverty by 2015.

“Hauling the rich and powerful before the courts may grab the headlines, but the poor will benefit more from efforts to eliminate the corruption that plagues their everyday lives,” says Anuradha Rajivan, Head of the UNDP Regional Human Development Report Unit. “Petty corruption is a misnomer. Dollar amounts may be relatively small but the demands are incessant, the number of people affected is enormous and the share of poor people’s income diverted to corruption is high,” she said.

“Corruption does not grease the wheels; it is a spanner in the works,” says Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the Head of the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency for Aceh and Nias, Indonesia in the Report. Teten Masduki, the head of Indonesia Corruption Watch calls “for a grand coalition between government and non-government reform forces” to fight corruption in bureaucracy and formal politics in his contribution to the publication.

The Report stresses that combating corruption makes more political sense now than ever before, especially in sectors like water and electricity, health and education, as it “not only confers credibility to the government, it also greatly promotes everyday citizen satisfaction.” With that in mind, the Report proposes a menu of options for political leaders in the Region to consider.

Justice for sale
In Asia-Pacific, politicians are seen as the most corrupt group in government followed by the police, with the judiciary running a close third. Nearly one in five people claim to have paid a bribe to police during the previous year in the Asia-Pacific region. Only a quarter of crimes are ever reported in Asia, according to Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives. In various Asia-Pacific countries, when victims were asked why they did not report a crime, between one third and three quarters cited lack of trust in the police as a reason. Justice too has a price, and two-thirds of the Asian population considers the courts to be corrupt, note the authors.

Greed vs. need in social services
Putting greed over need in corrupt health care systems diverts funds from immunization programmes, and adds to the millions of children who die in the region each year as a result of diarrhoea and disease caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.

Giving bribes for admission to a hospital —or for new mothers even to see their babies in a maternity ward— is common in South Asia. “One survey of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka found that health workers often demanded bribes for admission to hospital, to provide a bed, or to give subsidized medications,” says the Report.

At the same time, up to one-third of drugs supplied in some countries of the region may be expired or counterfeit and the poor often shoulder a significant burden to buy bandages or syringes when hospitals run short of supplies.

“Some cross-national studies have indeed suggested that in countries where levels of corruption are higher, some health inputs such as immunization are lower,” says the Report. According to a global study, child mortality could be halved with a two-point increase in the World Bank’s Control of Corruption Index.

In education, the Report shows that higher levels of corruption are correlated with fewer children attending schools and higher dropout and illiteracy rates, blocking key routes out of poverty. An extreme type of education corruption is found in ‘ghost teachers’ who may be on a payroll but never set foot in a classroom. Even ‘ghost schools’ exist.

Meanwhile, extending water, sanitation and electricity coverage is expensive, requiring large-scale investments in infrastructure —yet up to 40 percent of this is being dissipated through bid rigging and other corruption, the Report said. The poor have no choice but to pay ‘speed money’ just to get a utility connection. One survey in Bangladesh found that 60 percent of urban households either paid money or exerted influence to get water connections.

Natural resources up for grabs
The vast tropical forests, extensive mineral deposits and fertile agricultural lands of many Asian-Pacific countries should serve as a firm basis for economic and human development, says Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives, but too often their potential is drained away through corruption. The sheer volume of profit to be made through shady or illegal handling of natural resources means that corruption in this field often amounts to ‘state capture,’ where private companies pay public officials to shape laws, policies and regulations to their advantage.

In Indonesia, less than one-fourth of total logging operations, estimated at US$6.6 billion, is legal. Informal payments and bribes related to logging are estimated at over $1 billion annually.

Illegal logging, like other corrupt natural resources management practices, is particularly damaging for the poorest communities, explains the Report. For example, small farmers and indigenous people are driven into poverty as a result of illegal land expropriations and the exhaustion of natural resources, and local communities are left to suffer the health effects of toxic waste from mining illegally dumped into nearby rivers.

Keeping them honest
Innovative communities are now hitting back at corruption levels in the region, shows the Report. For example, in some schools in Indonesia, corruption in the management of funds has been minimized by involving parent’s associations, which decide on the use of these funds and monitor them to ensure they reach their intended destination. School officials meet with representatives of the parents’ association at the beginning of the school year to agree on an annual plan. During the year they provide them with detailed accounting of expenditures.

In the rural, one-teacher schools of the region of Rajasthan, India, where teacher absentee rates have topped 40 percent, a local non-governmental organization came up with a novel solution that required teachers to take a photo of themselves with the students at the beginning and end of each day using cameras with tamper-proof date and time functions in order to get their maximum salary. As a result, the number of days that children were actually taught each month increased by one third.

In Cambodia, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority made the decision to become transparent and to pay its staff based on their performance. Between 1999 and 2006, access to water in the city was transformed, jumping from 25 percent to 90 percent, while the number of household connections for the poorest people in the city rose from 100 to more than 13,000, the Report said.

At the national level, putting the right anti-corruption legislation in place —and enforcing it— has also produced success stories. In China, for example, a law was introduced in 2006 stipulating that staff members of schools and hospitals would face criminal penalties for seeking bribes or receiving kickbacks. The former Commissioner of the State Food and Drug Administration was subsequently convicted on charges of accepting more than $850,000 in bribes.

Call to an Agenda for Action
The Report argues that no single answer to the problem of corruption exists, but that a number of options are common across most countries in the region:

· Raising salaries for doctors, teachers and other civil servants so they do not have to rely on bribes to make a living; making civil service posts more merit-based; and strengthening oversight mechanisms by local governments (bureaucracy reform)
· Encouraging business codes of conduct that fit international standards
· Enacting and implementing the right to information laws
· Using information technology and e-governance to make administration more transparent
· Supporting citizen action to combat corruption by mandating that local governments publish basic information on contracts to facilitate citizen auditing

Since 2006, Asia-Pacific Human Development Reports have evolved into a regular series. Reports provide continuing analyses of critical development issues relevant at both the regional and country levels. The Asia-Pacific Human Development Report Series offers the region a forum for furthering dialogues and structuring debates to support a pro-poor agenda.

For further information, please contact:

Jakarta:
Surekha Subarwal, email:  surekha.subarwal at undp.org; mobile: (91 98) 1015 3924

Nina Doyle, email:  nina.doyle at undp.org; mobile: +62 (0)812 105 2796

Regi Wahono, email:  regi.wahono at undp.org; mobile: +62 (0)817 9900712

New York:
Cassandra Waldon; email:  cassandra.waldon at undp.org; telephone: +1 212 906 6499, or UNDP Newsroom; email:  undp-newsroom at undp.org; telephone: +1 212 906 5382.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the UN’s global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build better lives. UNDP works in 37 countries in Asia-Pacific. For more information, please visit www.undp.org

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The UNDP Washington Bulletin is a regular update of UNDP activities and events by the Washington Office.   June 2008 issue.

Tackling Corruption in the Asia-Pacific region:
New UNDP report examines priority areas, shares innovations, makes recommendations

A regional UNDP Human Development Report released this month argues that cleaning up the police, health, education and environment sectors should be a top political priority in the Asia-Pacific region in order to loosen the stranglehold of corruption on the lives of the poor.

The report was launched on June 12th in Jakarta by the President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono; UN Assistant Secretary General and UNDP Director of the Bureau for Policy Development, Olav Kjørvan; and the Indonesian Minister of Development Planning, Paskah Suzetta.

Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives illustrates how the region’s pervasive petty corruption smothers opportunities for the most vulnerable people, limiting their access to education and compromising basic health services. The report stresses that while anti-corruption efforts too often focus on exposing the ‘big fish’, it is ‘small fry’ corruption—from the salaries of fictitious ‘ghost teachers’ funneled into the pockets of corrupt officials, to doctors demanding cash payments from poor, pregnant women to deliver their babies—which causes more day-to-day suffering and could severely hamper the region’s development.

Agenda for action:
The report argues that no single answer to the problem of corruption exists, but that a number of options are common across most countries in the region:
·         Raising salaries for doctors, teachers and other civil servants so they do not have to rely on bribes to make a living; making civil service posts more merit-based; and strengthening oversight mechanisms by local governments
·         Encouraging business codes of conduct that fit international standards
·         Enacting and implementing the right to information laws
·         Using information technology and e-governance to make administration more transparent
·         Supporting citizen action to combat corruption by mandating that local governments publish basic information on contracts to facilitate citizen auditing.

To download the report, click here.  http://www.undprcc.lk/ext/crhdr/Download…

UNDP Anti-Corruption Public Service Announcements:

The UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok has produced a 30-second Public Service Announcement on anti-corruption, called Vanishing. It was produced for television broadcast on national, regional and international networks. Its simple message illustrates how corruption affects everyone – local communities, schools, hospitals, villages.

Another 30-second Public Service Announcement, also on corruption, is an animation called Cutting Corruption. This UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok TV production shows that corruption eats away at your future and warns its audience not to be a part of it.

 http://regionalcentrebangkok.undp.or.th/…

Brazil’s Ambassador to Japan touts biofuel as climate change cure.

Criticism that Brazil has prioritized the manufacture of biofuel at the expense of food production is preposterous and flies in the face of a superb solution for global warming, according to the Brazilian ambassador to Japan.

Biofuel advocate: Brazilian Ambassador Andre Amado discusses the benefits of ethanol at his embassy in Tokyo on June 10. YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

While the world’s biggest producer of sugar cane-based ethanol exported 3.532 billion liters in 2007, the conversion of crops has recently been accused of causing food prices to rise worldwide.

But Ambassador Andre Amado illustrated during an interview with The Japan Times last week that arable land used for sugar cane production is limited to 2 percent of Brazil’s total agricultural area, and that ultimately only half of the crop ends up in ethanol.

Ethanol production takes place “without expelling any other food production in Brazil,” Amado said, adding his country “should have the right to use (its) resources in a sustainable way.”

With intricate global issues expected to complicate the Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, next month, the input of emerging economies attending the expanded “outreach” meetings is likely to influence the outcome.

Brazil, one of the outreach participants, is ready to promote ethanol production as a solution for a variety of issues, and will propose differentiated responsibilities for developing countries during talks to create an international framework on global warming.

Amado, who has been stationed in Japan since 2005, said the climate change crisis is “undeniable” and Brazil intends to do its part in curbing the trend.

He said his country boasts one of the cleanest energy metrics in the world, with more than 46 percent of its needs satisfied with renewable sources such as biomass fuel and hydroelectric plants.

“This is an extraordinary contribution” to reducing worldwide carbon emissions, Amado stressed, adding that since the introduction of biofuel in the 1970s, Brazil has saved an estimated 700 million tons in carbon dioxide emissions.

In addition to its contribution to reducing global warming, sugar cane-based ethanol production provides jobs in poverty-stricken northeastern Brazil.

“The social and economical impact of sugar cane production has become quite clear,” Amado said, calling biomass fuel “the immediate solution” for the entire world.

Urging Japan to get involved in financing biomass ethanol production, the ambassador expressed hope that the world will shift from dependence on fossil fuels — which are produced in a mere 15 countries worldwide — to biomass ethanol, which can be manufactured in 120 countries.

Amado insisted that an international framework on climate change to follow the 1997 Kyoto Protocol must contain “a common commitment and consciousness” for all nations — and a “differentiated responsibility” for each country.

“The responsibilities of Japan should not be the same” as those of developing countries, he said, making the argument that binding all nations to a global benchmark would shackle the potential growth of poorer nations.

He said it would be unfair for developed countries to impose constraints on other countries’ economic progress, and while Japan is on the “right track” against global warming, its responsibilities cannot be transplanted to other countries.

Imposing reduction targets on developing countries would be like a sprinter way out in front of the field asking all his competitors to stop, Amado said.

Still, Japan must use its authority as host to lead the G8 summit to talk about climate change and guide the participating nations toward a consensus, he said.

“If China doesn’t belong to something, that doesn’t mean (the United States) shouldn’t belong to it, too,” Amado said in criticizing the U.S. for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

On the bilateral situation, Japan and Brazil should nurture a relationship as partners instead of mere business acquaintances, Amado proposed.

Brazil opted to introduce a Japanese-style digital television broadcast system in 2006 and is considering giving Japanese companies a contract to develop a shinkansen line connecting major cities. Other countries, including France and Germany, are also in the running. The winner is scheduled to be announced later this year.

“We are not trying to sell and buy more with Japan, although that would be good,” Amado said.

“We can try to become partners and start joint ventures” such as producing sugar cane in Africa or bidding to create infrastructure in Africa and the Middle East, he said.

Climate Destruction Will Produce Millions of ‘Envirogees’
By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted May 27, 2008.

The rise of environmental disasters from climate change and destruction of ecosystems will create a surge of refugees across the planet. Chew on this word, jargon lovers. Envirogee.

It carries more 21st century buzz than its semi-official designation climate refugee, which is a displaced individual who has been forced to migrate because of environmental devastation. Maybe the buzzword will catch on faster and shed some much-needed light on what will become a serious problem, probably by the end of this or the next decade. That light is crucial, because so far envirogees haven’t been fully recognized by those who certify the civil liberties of Earth’s various populations, whether that is the United Nations or local and national governments whose people are increasingly on the move for a whole new set of devastating reasons.

In short, immigration is about to enter a new phase, which resembles an old one with a 21st century twist. For thousands of years, humanity has fled across Earth’s surface fearing instability and in search of sustainability. But that resource war has kicked into overdrive thanks to our current climate crisis — a manufactured war with its own clock. And the clock is ticking.

From earthquakes in China to cyclones in Myanmar to water rationing in Los Angeles, societies are shifting like their borders. And all the outcry over so-called illegal immigration neglects to answer one time-honored question: If the borders aren’t standing still, why should the people who live in their outlines do so? Especially when they’re under attack from catastrophic floods, fires, droughts and any number of other environmental dangers?

Right now, the 1951 Geneva Convention does not recognize the envirogee phenomenon, instead focusing on immigration as a result of political persecution. But then again, it was established over five decades ago when Earth’s climate was anything but a terrorist. But the Geneva Convention, like everything that must adapt or die, needs to mutate in time with the rest of the world and its hyperconsuming inhabitants in order to remain relevant in our still-new millennium.

Here are some startling envirogee numbers to crunch: According to the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Earth’s fracturing communities will have 150 million envirogees by 2050. According to Australian climatologist Dr. Graeme Pearman, coastal flooding resulting from a mere two-degree rise in temperature would kick 100 million people out of their danger-zone homes by 2100.

Here’s more scary data. Desertification is claiming land from China to Morocco to Tunisia and beyond at an increasing rate. New Orleans and parts of Alaska are slowly sliding into the sea, while the former, as Hurricane Katrina ably illustrated, is becoming a reliable target for intensifying weather events, human corruption and half-assed infrastructure. Aquifers around the world are shrinking, while acidification is claiming cropland in Egypt and beyond. Hypoxia has claimed portions of the ocean itself with alarming speed, as stretches of the Atlantic and Pacific lose oxygen and, by extension, the marine life that not only feeds millions but establishes the continuity of the food chain.

No food chain, no food. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

But numbers are fallible, which is another way of saying the above figures are most likely best-case scenarios. In other words, the future is now. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the IPCC might have taken home a Nobel for their statistics and bleeding hearts, but their math was significantly off. Worse, the rate at which these things happen is rising exponentially.

“The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations accelerated over recent decades along with fossil fuel emissions,” explained a report on methane and CO2 rises by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Organization for Atmospheric Administration. “Since 2000, annual increases of two ppm or more have been common, compared with 1.5 ppm per year in the 1980s and less than one ppm per year during the 1960s.” As for methane, in 2007 it exploded by 27 million tons after a decade with relatively no rise at all. Think about that next time you eat that Happy Meal.

So what’s an envirogee to do, other than opt out of wasted fantasies like Happy Meals, factory farming, bottled water and Hummers? What else? Move.

Which is what envirogees worldwide are already doing right now, by choice or by gunpoint, and will do more often than not as situations on the ground and in the air deteriorate.

The conflict raging in Darfur is a sobering example of the complexity of the situation. It has so far displaced 2-3 million people, and for all the talk of political or religious persecution, the fact remains that it is at its root an environmental crisis. An arid desert whose water is drying up by the day, Darfur is one of the first flashpoints of our new phase of climate conflict, a conflict that U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon explained in the Washington Post as one “that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.” But this too should have been foreseen: According to remote sensing, Darfur sits atop of an underground lake that once used to hold over 600 cubic miles of water and dried up thousands of years ago.

And like Darfur, we are numbly sitting atop our climatological past while it races to catch up with us. Parched by thirst and hungry for fossil fuels which, in turn, only exacerbate that thirst and the wars it engenders, envirogees are streaming out of these hot zones into less murderous ones, whose inhabitants are circling their wagons on the outsiders. Civil wars are breaking out. Outsiders, in turn, are becoming invaders. The irony is rich.

It gets richer, or poorer, depending on where you stand on peak oil. The planet’s shrinking petroleum reserves are now more valuable than ever, and the prices for its capture and capitalization show zero sign of returning to normal. That expense is also beginning to be measured in lives, as carbon concentration exponentially increases and weather events become more extreme.

And you all know what they say about extreme times calling for extreme measures.

We’ve been here before, which is to say on the brink of extinction. In one instance, drought shrunk our numbers to about 2,000 scattered in a diaspora across Africa, a fearsome thought for a 21st century superpower that may be entering its own permanent drought. But the wrinkle is different this time around the tightrope: We built this coming dystopia with our own hands.

And that’s going to reshape not just immigration policy, but the concept of immigration altogether. And that’s where the envirogee comes in. The envirogee, you see, is on the run from himself.

In other words, and no matter how much blowhards like CNN’s Lou Dobbs bitch and whine, the inconvenient truth of climate change, and its rampant resource wars for what’s left of the planet’s stores, remains a reality. Beneath genocide in Darfur lies a desert that used to be a lake. There probably isn’t a better metaphor for our current hyperhighway to hell in existence, if one could argue that it was a metaphor to begin with. But one can’t, because it is reality, pure and simple. And so are envirogees, regardless of the outdated assertions of the Geneva Convention or the staid refusals of the insurance industry to wake up and smell the hurricanes.

“If we keep going down this path,” French prime minister Nicholas Sarkozy argued to the superpowers gathered at the Major Economics Meeting in Paris last month, “climate change will encourage the immigration of people with nothing towards areas where the population do have something, and the Darfur crisis will be only one crisis among dozens of others,” he stressed.

That is, we won’t be worried about Mexicans coming to the U.S. for economic reasons, or Africans doing the same in France and England. We will be worried about hyperviolent cyclones, floods and droughts destroying what’s left of our jobs and the people who want them, as we all pack our crap and move northward, where temperate weather and more bountiful supplies of water, gas and food lie. We will be the ones enduring the hard stares and perhaps bullets fired from locals who are circling their wagons against victims of their own consumption and apathy.

Whether or not we can settle, literally, with that solution, time will tell. But according to the continually underperforming science of climate crisis, we won’t settle for long. Barring any meaningful sociopolitical or economic engagement, to say nothing of much-needed technological revolution, on the issue, we’ll have turned from territorial citizens into climate nomads, all in a cosmological eyeblink.

Scott Thill runs the online mag Morphizm.com. His writing has appeared on Salon, XLR8R, All Music Guide, Wired and others.

Shooting the messenger - that is the Press.
May 22nd 2008 from the safe distance of BANGKOK.
From The Economist print edition

The press fights back as two graft-busting reporters are arrested.

THE leaders of Vietnam’s Communist Party say they are conducting a “no holds barred” crackdown on corruption in public life. They implore the country’s newspapers to sniff out and expose the fiddles of officials. In February the party chief, Nong Duc Manh, praised the press for unmasking graft and thereby fulfilling “the people’s desires”. The most notable case was a scandal at the transport ministry in 2006 in which newspapers revealed how officials had gambled around $750,000 of public money on the outcomes of football matches. In the clean-up that followed, the head of a road-building department at the ministry was jailed, along with seven others.

But recent events have cast doubt on the sincerity of the leadership’s claim to be fighting corruption at all levels. The main charges against Nguyen Viet Tien, a former deputy transport minister, who was the highest-level official to be arrested over the scandal, have been dropped. More worrying still, the two leading investigative reporters who exposed the scandal have been arrested, along with two former policemen who were among their sources, on vague charges of “abuse of power” and publishing false information.

Vietnam’s news media, despite an appearance of diversity, remain tightly controlled: their editors have to be approved by the party and are called in for restrictive “guidance” on what they can report. In recent years they have nonetheless been allowed to publish an increasing amount of criticism of government policy—though it always falls short of questioning the party’s “right” to rule. The arrested reporters work for two newspapers, Thanh Nien and Tuoi Tre, that were especially fearless in exposing official corruption.

In an unprecedented show of defiance, both newspapers are standing by their reporters. Thanh Nien has run an editorial demanding: “Free the honest journalists.” It says it has been “swamped” with messages of support from the public and some National Assembly members. It challenges the authorities to explain why, if the offending articles had been so inaccurate, none of the police, prosecutors and the ministry of public security had got around to pointing out the errors at any time in the past two years.

It remains unclear why the authorities have suddenly turned against the graft-busters. Were they getting too close to an even bigger scandal? Are party bosses trying to send a message that those above a certain level in the hierarchy are untouchable? Or could it be a visible symptom of strife between reformers and hardliners in the party hierarchy? “People feel that the journalists are maybe the pawns in some larger game but it’s not clear what that might be yet,” says Catherine McKinley, a media analyst in Hanoi.

The Communist Party, like its Chinese counterpart, seems to have won the people’s grudging acceptance for having delivered impressively rapid economic development since ditching collectivism over 20 years ago. Now, however, it is battling against roaring inflation and an incipient balance-of-payments crisis. It may need to take unpopular but vital measures; and economic growth may have to be sacrificed temporarily to restore stability. So the party’s bosses will need the public’s forbearance. One good way to forfeit it is to victimise those who have spearheaded the fight against corruption.

Fukuda pledges full support for planned ASEAN unified market.

By REIJI YOSHIDA, The Japan Times onlline, Staff writer, Friday, May 23, 2008.

Echoing his late father’s message more than three decades ago, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Thursday that Japan will seek closer ties with Southeast Asian countries by supporting the planned creation of a single integrated market in the region.

In his speech to a symposium in Tokyo, Fukuda reconfirmed Japan’s support for the establishment of an economic community by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by 2015, while noting Japan’s alliance with the United States will continue to provide security in the Asia-Pacific region.

Fukuda’s father, the late Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, is best remembered for his Fukuda Doctrine of 1977, which declared to Southeast Asian countries that Japan would build closer ties with the region and never again become a military aggressor.

“My first promise to you is that Japan will emphatically support ASEAN’s efforts to realize a community,” Fukuda told the “The Future of Asia” symposium, which was attended by several leaders from Asian nations, including Thailand, Malaysia, Laos and Indonesia. “I am determined to cooperate with the efforts of ASEAN, which is aiming to establish the ASEAN Community by 2015,” he said.

Fukuda meanwhile argued that the security situation in Asia remains unstable, singling out North Korea as one example.

The Japan-U.S. military alliance thus helps stabilize the region and “serve as the cornerstone for Asian prosperity,” he argued. “The Japan-U.S. alliance is now much more than a means for ensuring the security of Japan; rather, it also serves as an instrument for the stability of Asia and the Pacific as a whole.”

The 1977 Fukuda Doctrine was warmly welcomed and is believed to have favorably altered the sentiment of ASEAN countries toward Japan.

At that time, memories of Japan’s wartime aggression were still fresh in the region, which saw Japan’s postwar rise into an economic powerhouse as a cause for concern.

Fukuda also pledged Thursday make Japan a “peace-fostering nation.”

He cited Japan’s Indian Ocean refueling support for U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in Afghanistan, the fight against terrorism and pirates in the Strait of Malacca, as well as Japan’s contributions to regional efforts to cope with natural disasters and the spread of avian influenza.

India Bans Futures Trading in Potatoes, Soy oil, Rubber, Chickpeas, Wheat, Rice, two types of Dhal.

In US Congress There Is Talk Of Disalowing Futures Trading In Petroleum.

Above is in recognition of the fact that in between the consumers and the producers sit the speculators - so prices are not set according to the rules of supply and demand as one is taught in Economics 101.

When the issue was energy the world refused to wake up - when it comes to food seemingly some are ready to step in and Kudos to the Indian government. This website thinks they did the right thing.

China, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Libya … seem to have money to burn - will they burn us? The question is about the buying up of agricultural land outside their countries. Is the intent just to create new food production sites to feed their own citizens, or is this also an effort to corner commodities?

At this week’s session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, China distributed an April 2008 “Review of Sustainable Development in China (2008): Agriculture, Rural Development, Land, Drought, and Desertification.” prepared by The Office of the Leading Group for Promoting the Sustainable Development Strategy, P. R. China.

The report speaks frankly about “Obstacles and Challenges” but presents a program for the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and the Eleventh Five -Year Plan for Development of National and Rural Economy - “the objectives set up for building a new socialist countryside.” (Chapter 4, page 25, of the report)

The report is a statement of past success, and of great plans for further increase in efficiency while reducing the number of farmers and the rural percentages in the total population. This is the story of industrialization and of modernization in the agriculture sector of the economy - historically the high majority sector in China. We know that China is an agricultural success story as they turned away from a history of hunger. I had no intention to get anywhere deeper into the subject.

But, surprise, even though we knew that China is doing well in its exports and has a $1.3 trillion reserve, having created in the process also a new, sizable, middle class that will aim at an increase of the standard of living and demand a better array of foods including much more meat, we were yet not prepared for the Friday, May 9, 2008 article of the Financial Times that brought before our eyes the actual figures: “FOOD SHORTAGES - NEW EATING HABITS FORCE REVOLUTION ON CHINA’S FARMS.” “With 21% of the world’s population, 9% of its arable land and below average and poorly distributed water resources, China is already unable to supply enough homegrown animal feed” - says the article. www.ft.com

Further - “Although analysts disagree on the timing of china’s emergence as an importer of all grains, a few doubt that Beijing will be forced to modify its longstanding policy of self-sufficiency in basic foodstuffs to meet demand.”

But, the pressure for animal feed that is already felt now, nd the expectation of future shortages, send already now China to look for off-shore arable land.

Also from the Friday issue of the Financial Times, this from Jamil Anderlini, from Beijing, and Javier Blas from London: “Beijing looks at foreign fields in pushto guarantee food supplies - China Losing its ability to be self-sufficient.”

The reporters learned that a proposal drafted by the agriculture ministry would make supporting offshore land acquisition by domestic agricultural companies government policy. These acquisitions will be made by state-owned banks, manufacturers and oil companies. Some rather small projects have already been established in Africa.

It is easy to foresee how Chinese farms will evolve in various places - mainly in Africa, and Chinese farmers will be toiling on these farms. There is nothing alarming here, but it is hard to see how this will not project a return to colonialism - this time seated in China government owned enterprises - something like the old Dutch and English Trading companies? When I say it is not alarming, I mean that the intent will be to lift the produce for consumption at home and not as part of an international trade. if the locals will have any luck, they may actually be pushed to copy the Chinese production technologies and develop their own agriculture in parallel.

What is more worrisome, is a different paragraph in that article: “The move comes as oil rich, food poor countries in the Middle East and North Africa explore similar options. Libya is talking with Ukraine about growing wheat while Saudi Arabia has said it would invest in projects abroad TO ENSURE FOOD SECURITY AND CONTROL COMMODITY PRICES.” Now that is something hair-rising.

What we are now foreseeing is how the specialists in cartel building who have cornered the petroleum market, will now extend their reach into the food market. When the banana exporters tried this years ago - they were laughed off - but when the rise of food demand by China and India creates shrinking worldwide supplies, games by the money rich oil producers to start cornering food staples like corn, soy, wheat, rice or sugar, could indeed cause havoc.

Today, Monday May 12, 2008, The Financial Times writes under World News / Food: “UAE INVESTORS BUY PAKISTAN FARMLAND.”

The story from Dubai (Simeon Kerr) and Lahore (Farhan Bokhari) is about the Dubai based Abraaj Capital, one of the middle East’s largest private equity companies quietly buying farmland in Pakistan as part of plans by the UAE to increase food security and dampen inflation. Further, the government of Abu Dhabi was talking to the Islamabad officials. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also looking at Pakistan.

Abraaj already owns 800,000 acres of farm land in Pakistan and the Emirates Investment Group, and the Abu Dhabi Group are not far behind. Some in Pakistan start thinking that this might lead to increase in food prices in Pakistan. This while prices of food have already caused riots in Pakistan because of a 20% increase in March.

Besides Pakistan, a State in trouble these days, other Islamic States in trouble - Sudan and Somalia, are also offering lands for sale. Will all of this lead to what some dreamers (Jordan’s Agriculture minister) think will be sort of an Islamic/Arab self-help organization - or just another plain cartel? That is something to look after.

Further, also today, May 12, 2008, at the CSD at the UN, there was the SIDs Day. At one of the panels there was talk about the impact of the increase of the price of food commodities that is harming the Small Islands States. There was some talk about the global effects of the biofuel’s production using agricultural commodities. I felt compelled to bring up the Financial Times on-going articles in order to explain that the issue is much more complex and that it has to do rather with the fact that countries with excess m