This week, the International Policy, Development and Practice Speaker Series [at UC Berkeley] welcomed David D. Arnold, the President of The Asia Foundation. Seen through the lens of his work at The Asia Foundation, Mr. Arnold delivered a talk on “Asia’s Development Challenges.” He identified three major challenges for Asia and the Asia-Pacific area.

Sub-national conflicts, such as the decades-long one in Southern Thailand that reignited this week, continue to hold back development and growth.

First, he described the weakness of governance impeding economic growth and progress. However, interesting experiments to fight corruption have also begun. In Mongolia, for example, The Asia Foundation is helping to develop special courts to try corruption cases, as well as developing a website in India where people text information about bribes they paid to a server and a map of bribes is drawn from these texts. Secondly, he disaggregated the positive growth at the macro-level of Asian economies from the negative growth in income gaps and increasing inequality.

Finally, the third major development challenge he identified was an increasing prevalence of sub-national conflicts. He stated that if you look at the duration of these sub-national conflicts, the average duration is 32 years. The ongoing conflicts are taking their toll on development in Asia; conflict is estimated to retard growth and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals 1-3 percent per year.

When asked about the role of private institutions, Mr. Arnold emphasized that the value-added of foundations and NGOs is not monetary. Instead, private institutions can forge meaningful partnerships with civil society organizations within the countries they operate in, creating what he calls the “software” of development through which the hardware development (such as dams, etc.) can both take place and fit within. Secondly, private institutions have a strong value-driven approach. These two things combine to help private institutions play a catalytic and innovative role in development.

Mr. Arnold was also asked about the rise of “indigenous non-profits,” or the creation of foundations and NGOs funded by donors within Asia. He explained that most of these private institutions are doing singular, project-driven work, such as building schools or providing books, and are not oriented towards social justice and broader change. However, he predicts this will slowly change over the next two decades.

Mr. Arnold, in addition to his substantive comments on Asia, gave the crowd good professional advice. “Learn when to say yes,” he encouraged the room. He explained that learning when to say yes takes you to more interesting places and more fascinating jobs. He also explained that one who works in development needs to be a “cock-eyed optimist;” there are success stories and progress, and it is important to see and highlight them to encourage future good work.

Ashley Clark is a MPP/MA-IAS student at the University of California Berkeley. This piece originally appeared on Policy Matters, a blog published by the University’s Goldman School of Public Policy. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual author and not those of The Asia Foundation.

Read more on this topic in a recent conversation with ADB Managing Director General Rajat M. Nag, or learn about The Asia Foundation’s work in economic development and the region’s conflict-affected areas.

On January 24, Ambassador Eikenberry joins Asia Foundation President David Arnold in conversation at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles to discuss this chance for a better future, the 2014 transition, and political, economic, and security challenges ahead as the country works toward becoming a peaceful and stable society. Prior to his current position as the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, Ambassador Eikenberry spent 35 years in the United States Army holding two command posts in Afghanistan. As U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 to June 2011, he led President Obama’s civilian surge, in order to set the conditions for transition to full Afghan sovereignty. Read recent coverage in the blog of Afghanistan and analysis of the 2012 Survey.

In the 60 years since The Asia Foundation began, the global development landscape and accompanying aid architecture has changed dramatically. Tackling the challenge of global poverty reduction seems to be on track. In the early 1980s, more than half of people in developing countries lived in extreme poverty. Today, this figure is around 16 percent and falling. Asia is largely responsible for these dramatic figures. Asia has experienced one of the most rapid paces of development in human history and, hence, it is no wonder that political and economic pundits have dubbed this era “The Asian Century.”

Many countries in Asia also share the unique experience of being aid recipients and donors, often simultaneously. Asian countries as donors are now contributing to significant shifts in global aid architecture.

Alongside this success, however, the Asian Century faces looming challenges. These include climate change, the global financial crisis, food security, humanitarian crises resulting from devastating natural disasters, and persistent pockets of conflict and fragility. For many countries in Asia, the challenge is how to maintain a positive development trajectory, while tackling these challenges and avoiding the middle-income trap. It is fitting that the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) is being held in Asia. As host, South Korea provides a valuable, concrete example of how aid can be an effective catalyst of development.

Many countries in Asia also share the unique experience of being aid recipients and donors, often simultaneously. Asian countries as “donors” are now contributing to significant shifts in global aid architecture. Two decades ago, aid from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development‘s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries constituted 80 percent of total aid. Today this amount is closer to 50 percent. Contributing to this change in composition of global development assistance is the significant increase in assistance from non-DAC countries, notably China and India.

Although often characterized as new or emerging donors, many of these countries in fact have a long history of development cooperation that has simply fallen under the radar of traditional aid frameworks for many years. Beyond resources, these emerging actors bring distinctive philosophies, expertise, partners, and modalities to their cooperation. Many operate outside of the DAC. At the same time, there has not been an effective mechanism that reflects this diversity that brings together the different interests and perspectives of the current broad range of development actors. To address this gap, for the past year, The Asia Foundation has been collaborating with The Korea Development Institute (KDI) to convene a series of policy dialogues on Asian approaches to development cooperation. This dialogue, involving development cooperation officials, policy analysts, and partners from China, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand has revealed some intriguing similarities – as well as some important differences – among these countries with regard to the philosophy, purpose, and modalities of development assistance. They have also provided insights on the relevance of current international aid frameworks for Asian approaches, and whether donor alignment around an agreed set of principles and approaches is desirable or possible.

To continue this dialogue, this week in Busan we brought together experts from China, India, Vietnam, and Korea to discuss emerging Asian approaches to development cooperation and to share mutual experiences as both aid recipients and aid donors. The event – “Emerging Asian Approaches to Development Cooperation” – was hosted by The Asia Foundation, KDI, and Vietnam’s Ministry of Planning and Investment.

In addition to the rise of important new government actors, the phenomenal growth in private philanthropy and non-government development assistance has also transformed the basic architecture of the international aid system. It is estimated that private philanthropic aid (which includes contributions to NGOs and broader civil society organizations) from developed countries ranges from $65-75 billion annually. Indeed, some INGOS are larger than some DAC donors. In 2008, private philanthropy constituted 32 percent of total aid composition. Non-state development cooperation partners bring enormous intellectual capital, financial flows, technical capacity, and decades of experience to development work. They also provide valuable access to local networks, leaders, and communities.

INGOs and CSO efforts complement traditional ODA – which tends to focus on national-level plans and building state capacity – by offering innovative, locally grounded, and responsive programs, including extensive work with local civil society organizations. When brought together these two approaches provide a more robust definition of country ownership to the dialogue on development effectiveness.

This exciting new aid ecosystem, however, poses incredible challenges for coordination, management, and measurement of effectiveness. Diverse approaches have led to increased fragmentation in aid and a proliferation of aid instruments. As the volume of aid and number of donors has increased, so has the number of projects. Moreover, projects are becoming smaller. More than half of all donors projects amount to less than $100,000. The diversity in development actors has led to new coordination forums and expanding mandates for existing ones. These include MDG Summits, OECD/DAC, G20, UNDCF, among others. While many of these forums have overlapping mandates and membership, this diversity of organizational structures is perhaps a natural outgrowth and reflection of the dynamism and innovation now taking place in international development conventions.

Ultimately, the greatest prospects for effectiveness and coordination will come from the developing countries themselves. The diversity and complexity of aid, while straining national aid management systems, has also expanded opportunities and choice for developing countries. More resources, commitment, and trust are necessary to enable countries to set their own development agendas and manage development resources accordingly. In this regard, much can be learned from the experience of Asian countries, especially Korea.

HLF4 advocates for a new paradigm for development cooperation and one that is inclusive of increasingly influential countries outside the DAC. Moving forward, Busan’s global compact has all the ingredients to establish new milestones in aid and development effectiveness.

David D. Arnold is The Asia Foundation’s president and Anthea Mulakala is the Foundation’s country representative in Malaysia and regional advisor for donor relations. They can be reached at president@asiafound.org and amulakala@asiafound.org, respectively. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors and not those of The Asia Foundation. 

Over the last months, the world has watched as uprisings and revolutions have spread across the streets and squares of the Arab world. In Egypt, entire families – mothers, wives, daughters, grandmothers, showed remarkable courage in standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their brothers, sons, and fathers in the face of black-clad riot police calling for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Youth in Syria, Libya, and beyond continue to risk their lives, calling for lower food prices, job opportunities, and, most importantly, political reform. The future of these nations is far from certain, but few can argue that the recent events mark one of the most dramatic global political developments since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The protests that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and that are de-stabilizing other Arab regimes, have been youth-led and technology-enabled. Above, a protester waves a flag in Egypt's Tahrir square. Photo by M. Soli.

According to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center – the first major poll in Egypt since Mubarak’s ouster – “Egyptians are looking forward with extraordinary confidence and enthusiasm to their first free and fair elections this fall after the defining revolution of the Arab spring.” As the new president of The Asia Foundation, and former president of the American University in Cairo, this news, and the events that led to its unfolding, are powerful, instructive illustrations of what a lack of good governance, civic participation, and a functioning civil society can look like at full tilt. Our mission to improve governance and increase citizen participation in Asia requires we deeply examine the factors and forces that led to the sudden collapse of such entrenched regimes.

Arab youth truly have been at the vanguard of the revolution. The protests that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, and that are de-stabilizing other Arab regimes, have been youth-led and technology-enabled. For example, in Egypt, it was YouTube images of an innocent torture victim in Alexandria, combined with 70,000 volunteers on Facebook that galvanized the first major protests on Tahrir square on January 25. So, we ask ourselves, what does all of this mean for the rest of the world?

For lessons from the past, we can look to Asia for some examples. In 1998, in Indonesia, a student-led movement toppled a dictator of 32 years, unleashing similar fears to those felt in Egypt that extremist forces would fill the power void. In the years immediately after Suharto’s fall, however, Indonesia’s reform process was remarkable, Robin Bush, our country representative in Jakarta, recently recounted on In Asia. But, she quickly cautioned, as “reformists in Egypt start to chart their course through a democratic reform process, and experts begin increasingly to view Indonesia as a “Model for Egypt’s Transition,” it behooves us to take a closer look at where Indonesia’s reform has taken the country 13 years later. Many observers and analysts in Indonesia today feel that reform has stagnated for years now, and in some areas, is actually regressing.” (Read Robin’s new post this week, where she offers lessons from Indonesia’s democratic transition.)

On the 25th anniversary of the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Steven Rood our country representative in the Philippines, blogged from Manila that although the anniversary offers a “lens to view the same kind of peaceful ouster that played out in Egypt…..history’s verdict will depend on how much the new dispensation improves the lives of citizens.” Both countries suffer from poverty, and although in both cases the revolutions changed the government, they left uncertain consequences for development.

And Asia Foundation Korea expert Scott Snyder wrote on the idea of a “Libya Model” for North Korea, warning that this model “does suggest that the path to inevitable and necessary political change in North Korea may be inescapably violent, chaotic, and unsettling not only to North Korea, but to its neighbors and the world.”

This week I’m guest-editing In Asia, and our experts examine some of the most pressing issues and implications for Asia. Preeminent China scholar and Asia Foundation Vice Chair Harry Harding looks at China’s continuing political stability; while Stanford’s Don Emmerson asks, what is “the Muslim World?”  Our trustee, National Geographic’s Terry Adamson, examines how brands and products influence global values, and John Brandon, who directs our International Relations program, wonders if current events might distract from U.S. commitment to Asia. Korea expert Scott Snyder looks to East Asia for clues to democratic consolidation.

David Arnold, Asia Foundation president and former president of the American University in Cairo, visits Kabul University.

Today, I began a global speaking tour; the first stop was Stanford University in the Silicon Valley, where I joined Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, and Don Emmerson, to discuss the dramatic political developments sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, and the implications of those developments for the rest of the world. From the Bay Area, I’ll head to Jakarta, and then on to Sydney, Australia, where I’ll speak at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, and then on to New York for The Asia Foundation’s inaugural Lotus Leadership Awards, where we’ll honor visionary AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho, and finally, later this fall, to The Economist’s Banyan conference in Singapore.

We can of course only speculate about the path that various Arab countries may follow over the next decade. However, in the current global communications age, simply adopting a “wait and see” posture is probably not an option. As with the collapse of the Berlin Wall more than two decades ago, the reverberations of the “Arab Awakening” are being felt well beyond the Middle East.

David D. Arnold joined The Asia Foundation as president in January 2011. He can be reached at president@asiafound.org.

In January, development and philanthropy veteran and former president of the American University in Cairo David D. Arnold began as The Asia Foundation’s new president. In his first interview, he speaks to In Asia about development challenges in Asia, the shifting economic landscape, and the Foundation’s cutting-edge work in good governance.

Q: As a development veteran who has lived and worked for years in Asia and the Middle East, what do you believe are the most critical and urgent development challenges facing Asia today?

Asia is a vast and diverse region, and it is important not to over-generalize. Different countries and sub-regions face different development needs and challenges. The strength of The Asia Foundation is that our extensive network of field offices staffed locally and longstanding relationships with local partners on the ground enable us to tailor and adapt programs to the unique needs of each country in which we work.

Having said that, one of the common threads that runs through many of the countries where we work is the need to undertake legal reforms and improve basic governance systems and processes. Several Asian countries have experienced rapid economic growth during the past two decades and are now finding that they need to realign their legal and political systems to meet a new set of economic, social, and political needs and challenges. More than half of our work across the region is broadly focused on governance, law, and civil society initiatives.

Another area of cross-cutting regional concern is management of conflicts – at both the international and sub-national levels. The Foundation has a long history of supporting so-called “track-two” dialogues to help resolve international disputes between and among various countries of the region, and is now increasingly active in conflict management and peacebuilding efforts between minority populations and central government authorities in carefully selected settings. It is widely recognized that security is a vital prerequisite for development; our conflict resolution work is therefore closely and integrally connected to our broader development goals.

Q: Good governance – once a term rarely used in the mainstream – now regularly appears in major news stories as a prerequisite to any nation’s long-term developmental success. As new head of The Asia Foundation and a former governance expert for the Ford Foundation in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka many years ago, to what do you attribute this shift among the development community and broader public?

Governance – good or bad – has always been a major factor in the health of a society or institution of any kind. But today, many countries of the region are facing increasing pressure to improve and strengthen their governance systems in ways that will foster transparency, enhance civic participation, and promote responsiveness, especially as it relates to economic concerns. Good governance – essentially the process of decision making and how those decisions are implemented – increasingly is seen as essential not only for the delivery of public goods and services, but also to create an environment that will be conducive for investment and economic growth. Governance reforms are also necessary to make sure that the benefits of economic growth are widely shared and that GDP growth translates into improved living standards and economic opportunities for a large segment of their population. Without making the needed improvements in their legal systems, governing institutions, and policy-making mechanisms, many countries of the region are likely to see their economies stagnate and living standards decline. This is one reason that the Foundation places major emphasis on helping countries reform their legal systems, create transparent and accountable government institutions, and increase citizen participation in shaping the policies and decisions that directly affect their lives.

David Arnold at the Ministry of Women's Affairs on a recent trip to Kabul.