Asia Institute - Research Publications
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ItemCivil Society and Youth Leadership for Transformation(Risk Institute, Trieste- Geneva, 2020)This discussion paper looks at the current historical momentum and potential future development of civil society and youth leadership for a systemic transformation to a sustainable new civilization. It identifies emerging challenges, obstacles, and some of the innovative new leadership strategies that have been developed to overcome them. Civil society is central in the process of transformation in a dual sense: As the target of transformation — it is civil society at large together with governments and the private sector that must shift to sustainable practices in our daily lives, — and as an instigator of change—individuals, informal networks or organized groups of citizens specifically dedicated to promoting this transformation. This boundary between recipients and agents in society is fluid, as more and more people take action or join organized efforts to elicit a purposeful transformation.
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ItemCurrent Tasks of Academies and Academia(Risk Institute Trieste, 2020)The present article is written as an issue paper on academies for the GL-21 Project. It traces activities of academies and their associations in the present information-rich society. The state-of-the-art of the academic world is briefly described. This permits to focus on general trends in knowledge management in general and the role of academies. The successful strategies and interdependencies form the framework of activities, where one should also understand the possible obstacles. The impact of these activities together with ideas for more social responsibility and cooperation are examined. The unique position of WAAS in organizing a network for social progress is underlined.
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ItemMaking Sustainability Happen: The Jena Declaration(Risk Institute, 2021-11-01)The Jena Declaration, introduced below, argues that the SDGs cannot be achieved simply by intensifying the use of established methods and strategies. For a comprehensive transformation to sustainability a fundamental change in strategy is necessary, an approach that builds on the power of millions of citizens and local communities throughout the world and the integrative perspective of the social sciences and arts.
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ItemAchieving Global Justice, Security and Sustainability: Compassion as a Transformative Method(Risk Institute, 2021-11)This paper first examines the geopolitical trends of the post-Cold War era. The main features of this period are an escalating crisis of democratic institutions, extreme economic inequality with a concomitant lack of justice and compassion, and a rising sense of disenchantment with politics. This in turn has increased the appeal of nativist populism, especially among downwardly mobile middle classes. This crisis of political economy coincides with a severe and rapidly escalating global ecological crisis. In response, the author calls for a new paradigm of international cooperation wherein principles of justice and compassion are applied as a practical method to solve the key challenges of our times in an effective and inclusive manner, arguing that business-as-usual is not a viable alternative for survival.
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ItemThe COVID-19 Pandemic as a Systemic Stress Test: Who is most vulnerable to food insecurity and other risks in a crisis and why?(Risk Institute, 2021-06)The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that in a global systemic crisis, differences in impact are not confined to immediate threat, in this case virus infection and mortality rates. Indirect impacts such as reduced affordability of food due to income loss can be and often are more severe. Economic inequality thus acts as a massive amplifier of disaster impact. Inequality literally kills disadvantaged people under crisis conditions. Already the number of people subject to severe food insecurity and poverty has risen dramatically in the wake of COVID-19 and other crises, such as climate change, are adding to this unfolding tragedy. Conversely, policy designed to lower inequality is the best preparation for any crisis, and should accompany all measures for disaster risk reduction and impact mitigation.
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ItemLand Grab Practices as a Threat to Livelihood and Food Security in India? A Case Study from Aerocity Expansion Project from S.A.S. Nagar, Punjab(Sage Publications, 2020)Agricultural dominant societies in India have slowly shifted from traditional agricultural practices to modern infrastructural development. The recent trend of developing high-tech cities is an effort by the Punjab government to bring additional investment to the state and boost its economy. But to do that at the expense of highly fertile agricultural land is a debatable proposition. One of the most recent ventures towards this objective is the kind of development being initiated in the vicinity of Chandigarh and Mohali by Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA)—an Aerocity Expansion project. This article will focus on Patton, Kurai and Seon—three out of 14 villages where 1,305 acres of land have been proposed to be acquired. This article explores blatant land grab practices by the state authority in the name of development, which act as barriers to the food security and threaten the livelihood of those whose land will be acquired in the near future. The study will further focus on people’s perception of the new development project initiated by GMADA.
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ItemLumbung nation: metaphors of food security in Indonesia(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2020-10-23)Indonesian food security policy suffers from a fundamental internal contradiction–between neoliberal pressures towards more integration into the global market-based food system geared towards profit and an intractable residual belief in national self-sufficiency in staple foods. While this contradiction presents itself in technical and economic terms, it is fundamentally a matter of culture and ideology. The article addresses this contradiction by way of a study of key metaphors of food security, among which the most central is lumbung–the traditional rice barn. Lumbung of various kinds have been a central pillar of food security across the archipelago since ancient times and still serve in many contexts as a metaphor for food security at various levels. While this ‘lumbung culture’ may have ‘hindered’ attempts to integrate Indonesia more fully into wider circuits of market exchange, it has to some extent protected the Indonesian food system from the growing vulnerabilities of climate, resource/environmental stresses, and pandemics.
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ItemRegaining Lost Ground: A Social Movement for Sustainable Food Systems in Java, Indonesia(International Commission on the Anthropology of Food, 2020)Since the 1960s, Indonesia has industrialised agriculture, following the model promoted by the global bio-tech research complex and development agencies. Alternative approaches favoured by local grassroots organisations and NGOs include solutions grounded in moral economic systems of communal solidarity, small-scale production, local knowledge and the localisation of distribution and consumption networks. To illustrate the viability of such alternatives, we explore new Indonesian farmers’ movements that seek to produce high-yield, high-quality low-cost food using ecologically responsible food production methods and ‘symbiotic cooperation’ strategies founded upon a moral economy ethos. Our case studies contribute to a model for a worldwide transition to socially and ecologically sustainable regional food systems.