This report explains why Southeast Asian countries need to design pandemic recovery policies that hit both ambitious socioeconomic and environmental goals. The third in a four-part series, the report considers the impact of COVID-19 on Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to show how a green recovery can help safeguard against future health crises. Analyzing areas including agriculture, cities, and oceans, the report lays out policy measures designed to identify, create, and finance green growth opportunities. It shows how COVID-19 has presented countries with a chance to hit the reset button and build a socially, economically, and environmentally resilient future.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has seen governments across developing Asia move significant amounts of capital into relief efforts that have saved countless lives and livelihoods. But emerging economic recovery packages must not upset the sensitive balance between economic growth and the region’s natural capital. Many global thinkers are advocating the critical role of green infrastructure in supporting economic growth and livelihoods, while safeguarding the Paris Agreement targets. This publication examines green and innovative finance mechanisms that can be incorporated into government recovery strategies to incentivize green infrastructure investment. These mechanisms can play a key role in catalyzing much-needed funds from private capital for a green and sustainable regional recovery.

ASEAN’s real gross domestic product (GDP) had declined sharply due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic downturn and the uncertainty about the future reduced the new investments in green projects drastically. Besides this, many governments rolled back environmental regulations and taxes and increased fossil-fuel intensive infrastructure and electricity to stimulate economic growth. Post-Pandemic Green Recovery in ASEAN consists of several empirical studies using fresh data, with regional and country-level perspectives on ways to keep the greenness of the economic recovery plans. The chapters look at various aspects and sectors, including tourism, infrastructure, energy, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), employment, and livelihood, by assessing the effectiveness of various tools and instruments, including green finance, carbon taxation, green Sukuk, credit guarantee, cash transfer payment, power purchase agreements, and the related policies. They also provide practical policy recommendations useful for the ASEAN member states and other developing regions for the green recovery in the post-pandemic. Reiterating the importance of green and low-carbon mechanisms and climate change tackling policies besides the usual economic recovery strategies, this book is a precious resource for the researchers of economics, finance, ASEAN and Asian studies, and policymakers.

This report identifies well-established sectors needing transformation or improvement (tourism, agro-processing, and garments), along with evolving sectors with high potential for growth (electronics and digital trade) as Southeast Asian countries hammer out policies to boost post-COVID-19 recovery and secure a greener future. The first in a four-part series, the report looks at the pandemic’s impact on these five sectors across Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand. It identifies reforms and strategies to help core industries recover and grow over the medium term. This report underscores how deepening regional cooperation can help policy makers boost their countries’ COVID-19 recovery and build more resilient economies and societies.

Understanding the effects of both climate change and green growth policies on jobs and people is thus essential for making the transition in Southeast Asia an inclusive one. The study explores these issues, with emphasis on the potential effects on labour of an energy transition in Indonesia, and of a transition in the region’s agricultural sector, illustrated by a simulated conversion from conventional to organic rice farming.

This report shows why Southeast Asian countries need to consider tax reforms after many struggled to finance massive public expenditure programs to combat COVID-19. The second in a four-part series, the report considers the impact of COVID-19 on Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to lay out steps policymakers can take to create healthier fiscal spaces. It illustrates challenges faced around informality, tax collection, compliance, and progressivity. It emphasizes how preventing fraud, taxing wealth, and introducing environmental levies can help reduce poverty, tackle inequality, and contribute toward more sustainable growth. It is therefore crucial to understand the required policy responses as well as potential technologies that could help expand the tax base, increase tax compliance, and ease the process of paying taxes.

This report illustrates why Southeast Asian countries need big data for pandemic recovery to radically transform the delivery of key services such as health care, social welfare and protection, and education. The final of a four-part series, it looks at the impact of COVID-19 on Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand to determine how big data could be an invaluable tool to help governments analyze the challenges they face. It outlines policy reforms and recommendations to help capture the benefits of big data. These include drawing up digital road maps, improving technical infrastructure, increasing data quality, and ramping up training programs to create a skilled workforce to lead the digital transformation.

Peter Rowe and Yun Fu’s second volume on the modernization of architecture in the Far East deals with Southeast Asia and Austronesia, including the 12 nation states of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, East Timor, Philippines and Taiwan, as well as the ocean peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. The modern architecture of these culturally and nationally heterogenous regions echoes local vernacular traditions and colonial as well as postcolonial hegemonies from both the East and the West. The book tells the stories of these separate roots and their culmination into contemporary architectural production, analyzing the distinctiveness and quality of approx. 65 building projects that have emerged in the past half century.

Climate change is a global concern of special relevance to Southeast Asia, a region that is both vulnerable to the effects of climate change and a rapidly increasing emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs). This study focuses on five countries of Southeast Asia that collectively account for 90% of regional GHG emissions in recent years---Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam. It applies two global dynamic economy–energy–environment models under an array of scenarios that reflect potential regimes for regulating global GHG emissions through 2050. The modeling identifies the potential economic costs of climate inaction for the region, how the countries can most efficiently achieve GHG emission mitigation, and the consequences of mitigation, both in terms of benefits and costs. Drawing on the modeling results, the study analyzes climate-related policies and identifies how further action can be taken to ensure low-carbon growth.