In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

Giang has lived his whole life in the village of Phu Lang, a traditional ceramic handicraft village about 30km north of Hanoi. Giang’s entire family has been producing the same jars and pots that they and many other family businesses in the village have for decades. However, when we last met with Giang, he told [...]

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On Monday night, April 2, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced to the nation that the country was on track to achieve its goal of high-income developed nation status by 2020. Unveiling the results of the first 2-year phase of the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) and Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), Najib proudly stated that the list of achievements has been “nothing short of astounding.”

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“Just because they are poor and isolated doesn’t mean they don’t have the potential to be the next Bill Gates,” said Shahed Keyes, the founder of Subornogram Foundation in Bangladesh, while introducing me to lively students at a school he started on the remote island of Mayadip.

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Internet users in Laos are estimated at only 7 percent of the population as of 2010, the last time this data was gathered. But, despite how low this seems, that is double the number of users than in 2008. And, as the economy continues to grow, internet usage is steadily climbing in Laos.

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The most lasting impression of my first trip to South Asia is the empowered women I met at every turn. Asia’s economic future depends less on finding a new technology or development strategy and more on expanding opportunities for women.

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As we reflect on the state of global water on World Water Day 2012, measurable progress has been made over the last two decades, but much more remains to be done. Looking ahead, who are the catalytic change agents? The answer: women. On March 6, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) published a report stating that, as of 2010, 89 percent of the world’s population had access to safe drinking water. This exceeds the international target set by the seventh Millennium Development Goal on environmental sustainability (MDG7) by one percent.

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Climate change combined with rapid population growth and urbanization is placing intense pressure on South Asia’s most precious resource: water. Per capita water availability in the region has decreased by 70 percent since 1950, according to the Asian Development Bank.

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A bowl of rice, vegetables, and tofu is a meal that has been eaten for hundreds of years throughout Asia. It is a meal that requires approximately 571.5 liters of water to produce. And, it is a meal that is, slowly but surely, being replaced. Throughout the region, people are increasingly…

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Tomorrow is World Water Day. Tragically, by the end of the day, 4,300 children somewhere in the world will have died because of contaminated water and poor sanitation. That’s one child every every 20 seconds. This is an appalling statistic, but still represents a marked improvement from 12 years ago…

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This past week I (and, truth be told, most of the faculty in the Southeast Asia Studies Program at SAIS) went to Toronto for the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting. This was a distinct change in atmosphere from the policy-oriented D.C. environment to the more abstract and less time-bound world of academe.

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