Regional Co Operation In Asia

This book reviews progress with regional cooperation and integration in Asia and the Pacific and explores how it can be reshaped to achieve a more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive future. Consisting of papers contributed by renowned scholars and Asian Development Bank staff, the book covers four major areas: public goods, trade and investment, financial cooperation, and regional health cooperation. The book emphasizes how the region can better leverage regional integration to realize its vast potential as well as overcome challenges such as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

This report discusses the enhanced framework of the Asia-Pacific Regional Cooperation and Integration Index (ARCII) that now includes digital connectivity and environmental cooperation among other innovations for monitoring progress. The ARCII has been used for monitoring progress in various dimensions of regional cooperation and integration (RCI) in Asia and the Pacific since 2017. With these new features of the ARCII, the report explores the links between regional and global economic integration and sheds light on the application of the index to RCI analysis and policy strategies for Asia and Pacific economies.

This report reflects the changes in the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Program's operational plan for the period 2016–2025. It outlines the updates on the supporting list of priority projects resulting from a rigorous vetting process. This involves defining SASEC transport and energy networks and identifying priority projects based on preparedness and their roles in filling network gaps. The result is a more reasonable estimate of funding needs to help meet the SASEC Program's goals of multimodal connectivity, energy market development, and increased intraregional and interregional trade.

Institutional activities have remarkably transformed East Asia, a region once known for the absence of regionalism and regime-building efforts. Yet the dynamics of this Asian institutionalization have remained an understudied area of research. This book offers one of the first scholarly attempts to clarify what constitutes institutionalization in East Asia and to systematically trace the origins, discern the features, and analyze the prospects of ongoing institutionalization processes in the world’s most dynamic region. Institutionalizing East Asia comprises eight essays, grouped thematically into three sections. Part I considers East and Southeast Asia as focal points of inter-state exchanges and traces the institutionalization of inter-state cooperation first among the Southeast Asian states and then among those of the wider East Asia. Part II examines the institutionalization of regional collaboration in four domains: economy, security, natural disaster relief, and ethnic conflict management. Part III discusses the institutionalization dynamics at the sub-regional and inter-regional levels. The essays in this book offer a useful source of reference for scholars and researchers specializing in East Asia, regional architecture, and institution-building in international relations. They will also be of interest to postgraduate and research students interested in ASEAN, the drivers and limits of international cooperation, as well as the role of regional multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific region.

The text provides a comprehensive introduction to the SAARC, describing the historical developments that lead to its formation, it examines the institutional structure, objectives and effectiveness of the SAARC in its role as South Asia’s leading regional institution. Drawing on original research it offers a fresh and accessible account of SAARC, arguing that South Asia forms a unique regional security complex that enables certain forms of regional cooperation and bars cooperation on other issue areas

South Asian leaders have made it a priority to tackle key regional issues such as poverty, environment degradation, trade and investment barriers and food insecurity, among others.

Since 2019, Network of ASEAN-China Think-tanks (NACT) has been publishing joint researches of all its Working Groups. This book is a collection of research papers contributed by ASEAN and China scholars.This book is published at a time of growing debate in the region over connectivity. The contributing scholars provide their ingenious and insightful thoughts from either a national or regional perspective. The book also contains Working Group Report that include innovative and practical policy recommendations on strengthening the connectivity between ASEAN and China.

Rapid changes have taken place in the structure of the global economy, and this book looks at how South Asia can take advantage of these changes. The author argues that the developing global economy will be more complex than originally thought, that instead of a bipolar model with two countries, the US and China, at the centre, it will be multipolar with eight centres of economic activity, including India. The book goes on to suggest that in the context of such a model, there should be regional cooperation between India and its immediate neighbouring countries for South Asia to advance as an economic region. It argues that South Asia will need to look at its history, and that changes in attitudes, particularly in India and Pakistan, are necessary. The possible benefits to the region, in terms of increases in the rates of economic growth if the regional approach is adopted, are discussed. The book presents a useful contribution to studies in South Asia, as well as Asian Economics.

This volume foregrounds the importance of regional cooperation in the context of food security challenges in South Asia. South Asia holds the key to global achievement of SDG targets of ending hunger and malnutrition – it accounts for nearly one-third of food-insecure people on the planet, with every third child suffering from stunting due to malnutrition. Similar food preferences, production systems, and the transboundary nature of agrarian ecosystems call for coordinated action by South Asian countries, complementing national actions dealing with food security challenges. In this volume, leading experts discuss the perspectives of key South Asian countries in leveraging regional cooperation for addressing food security challenges and reflect on the potential of cooperative actions in different areas. The book proposes a ten-point regional policy agenda covering cooperation for combatting climate change, regional trade liberalization, operationalization of regional food reserves, leveraging technology, sharing of good practices, regional institution building, coordinated positions in multilateral trade negotiations, addressing trans-boundary outbreak of livestock diseases, strengthening food safety standards, and the management of shared natural resources. A key volume on accomplishing SDGs in the South Asian context, this book will be of immense interest to policy makers, researchers, and development practitioners. It is also essential reading for scholars and researchers in the areas of development studies, South Asia studies, food security, environment and sustainability.