This project report provides the findings from the assessment of utilization of digital technologies in agriculture to achieve food supply chain resilience and food security in Southeast Asia, conducted in 2020-2021, and commissioned to the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU). This project was supported by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat as well as the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA). It is the second component of the larger project, “Enhancing Food Supply Chain Resilience and Food Security in ASEAN.”

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Peace and security studies in Southeast Asia show a rich array of theoretical and policy-oriented research that highlights key themes in the prevention and management of conflicts. These themes also highlight salient concepts that define approaches to peace and security. Two themes are noteworthy. First, while peace and security are not mutually exclusive, security cannot be assured by focusing on negative peace alone but also by a purposeful pursuit of positive peace, hence comprehensive security is critical. The second theme is the importance of regional institutions like ASEAN in managing intra-state relations. Given the fluid state of the global security environment, there is now greater scope for new thinking on how approaches to peace and security can be made more responsive to achieve shared goals.

Against a backdrop of heightening competition between the United States and China, Southeast Asia has come under greater scrutiny as analysts examine where ASEAN states stand in this power rivalry.

With its history of managing intramural conflicts and as the pioneer of multilateral institutions in the Asia Pacific, there is growing interest in ASEAN’s preference for active neutrality in managing the regional order. For analysts and policymakers in Southeast Asia, development imperatives trump bandwagoning and containment.

Some observers may find this stance unrealistic given the close bilateral relationships that certain Southeast Asian states have with the United States and China. But what is often missed are the development and security imperatives of these states.

For Southeast Asia, development is security — an ideology that has prevailed since the postcolonial period until today. This thinking has translated to ASEAN’s notion of comprehensive security, which goes beyond concern for military threats to include political, economic and sociocultural issues. Most states in Southeast Asia have always put a premium on developmental issues, particularly now given the uncertainties in the global environment.

With troubled relations between the United States and China and threats to multilateral cooperation, it is important for Southeast Asia to reclaim the concept of comprehensive security and promote cooperative security. These are critical frameworks in crafting responsive policies to address the complex and cross-cutting challenges facing Asia and the rest of the world.

Comprehensive security has a long history in Southeast Asia. It was a key concept developed by ASEAN states in the late 1970s and early 1980s to inform responses to the challenges facing the region. To ASEAN countries, economic stability is fundamental to regime legitimacy and security. Comprehensive security paid close attention to economic problems, but also included important political issues affecting stability and regime survival.

In the mid-1990s, the emergence of the concept of human security introduced a focus on threats to individuals and communities, such as environmental degradation, food security and health. These issues have now been integrated into Southeast Asia’s notion of comprehensive security and remain important contributions to security thinking and practices within and outside Asia.

As the number of security challenges continued to grow, comprehensive security became even more important given the transnational impacts of these challenges. In the post-COVID environment, the global economic crisis and climate change-related issues like food security have become even more consequential to the wellbeing of Southeast Asia.

Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam are among the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The economic costs from these natural hazards are currently estimated to be US$780 billion and are projected to increase to US$1.1–1.4 trillion under worst-case scenarios.

The failure to institute mitigation and adaptation measures early, particularly for less-developed states in the region, has serious implications for human security. This has become more critical after the pandemic inflicted a severe blow to the global economy. The International Monetary Fund’s recent economic outlook warned of a ‘rocky road ahead’, with the lowest five-year growth projection since 1990 of 3 per cent per annum. While the growing economic risks are attributed to many factors — including the war in Ukraine — these have a multiplier impact on human security, worsening job security and rising food prices.

While the growing complexity of security challenges calls for deeper and more robust multilateral cooperation, there is growing fragmentation. Widening inequality, forced human displacement and alienation have led to an erosion of trust in institutions at all levels, from the national to the global. This is compounded by misinformation and disinformation. People’s lived experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown how institutions failed to prepare states and societies to deal with 21st century transnational challenges.

With these daunting challenges, there are compelling reasons for Southeast Asia to reclaim comprehensive and cooperative security. This requires ASEAN to demonstrate their ability to push ahead with the slew of regional cooperation programmes outlined in the three ASEAN communities — political, economic and sociocultural.

Urgent agendas include expediting the integration of ASEAN economies and narrowing the development gap among its members. Also critical is helping communities deal with the impacts of climate change, building societal resilience, preparing for future pandemics and addressing transnational crimes like human trafficking and cybersecurity.

It is critical for ASEAN to continue championing comprehensive security to help its members cope in addressing increasingly complex internal and regional problems. They should deepen cooperation with their dialogue partners through the ASEAN Plus Three and East Asia Summit frameworks.

Small- and medium-sized countries in Southeast Asia should focus on working together to advance cooperative security instead of resorting to exclusive security arrangements like the QUAD and AUKUS, which tend to fuel fragmentation. Southeast Asia should once again exercise their agency and actively take the lead in advancing multilateralism in Asia.

Mely Caballero-Anthony is Professor of International Relations and Head of the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

This article was developed based on the author’s presentation at the Southeast Asia Regional Geopolitical Update at The Australian National University on 1 May 2023.

Disaster risk reduction is now part of the G20’s areas of cooperation. This provides India, the current G20 presidency, a unique opportunity to draw upon its experience to develop disaster management at the multilateral level and spearhead this initiative at its formative stage. Of significance are the challenges India has faced while developing regional disaster management within the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, and the lessons that can be learnt to overcome these problems from a more functional multilateral organisation, much like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. These experiences from a disaster-prone region in the Global South are an ideal case study for the G20. This policy brief aims uses this case study as a basis to generate recommendations for the G20 Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction to collaborate more effectively. Principally, it recommends the development of a mechanism for sharing best practices among the member countries.

Book Description

This edited volume examines the multifaceted impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on peoples and states in East Asia.

The book brings together selected case studies in Southeast Asia and the wider East Asian region that analyse how states in the region have responded to the pandemic and its multi-dimensional threats to human security, including risks of atrocity crimes. In the context of protecting human security and upholding the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the work analyses how such a consequential crisis has compounded socio-economic and political problems, exacerbated societal fault lines, and created new types of risks for people’s safety and security. Using the United Nations Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention, the book presents seven case studies that identify relevant risks factors confronting selected countries and the extent to which the global pandemic has magnified and/or exacerbated such risks for affected populations. It draws key lessons on how states should manage extant and emerging risks for atrocity crimes and how they can build and enhance their capabilities for preventing atrocities in both conflict-affected and relatively stable states, particularly within the context of Pillar 1 (prevention) and Pillar 2 (capacity building) of the R2P principle.

This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, humanitarian protection, Asian politics, International Relations, and Security studies.

The rise of climate change-induced events and the changing geopolitical realities have opened new opportunities for ASEAN

• AADMER
• ASEAN
• CLIMATE CHANGE
• INDO-PACIFIC
• QUAD
• SECURITY

Six months since the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, World Bank data shows that inflation has been high at above 5 percent across almost all low-income and middle-income countries globally, with food inflation as high as 31.2 percent in East and Southern Africa in June.

To protect domestic food security, over 34 countries have implemented food export bans and export-limiting measures, and over 86 countries have placed trade measures impacting food and fertilizers. These are triggering what the United Nations has dubbed as the “the largest cost-of-living crisis of the 21st century to date”.

Conflict has long been identified as a significant driver of food insecurity and hunger. Within conflict situations, farmers are driven away from fields/farms, agricultural assets and food stock are damaged, and logistics and supply chains are disrupted. Combatants have also targeted agriculture infrastructure and production. Islamic State fighters in Iraq reportedly sabotaged irrigation wells using rubble, oil and foreign objects, thereby killing plants and livestock.

These cause instability in food security in conflict-torn areas. Food production in sub-Saharan African shrank by 12.3 percent during conflict times between 1970 and 1994, and the Central African Republic’s cereal production dropped amid its civil war. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, global undernourishment increased to 815 million in 2016 due to violent conflicts and climate-related shocks, with about 400 million living in conflict zones.

In the first month and a half of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one in three Ukrainian households were already food insecure. Ukraine is no stranger to the impacts of conflict on hunger, holding a painful collective memory of Holodomor (“death famine”) which killed millions in the first decade of Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union by 1933.

While the impacts of conflict on food security within countries are rather established, what makes today’s crisis different, is that the conflict within Ukraine is also worsening food insecurity beyond its Ukraine’s borders.

Ukraine and Russia are key producers of agricultural commodities, contributing 29 percent of global wheat exports, 62 percent of sunflower oil, and more than 12 percent of maize. The blockade of Ukrainian grain exports thus sparked global fears over heightened food prices.

Ninety-four countries are projected to be impacted by either food, energy, or finance concerns due to the war in Ukraine. Three-quarters of the 1.6 billion inhabitants in these countries are likely to vulnerable to these three challenges simultaneously, creating a “perfect-storm” making a cost-of-living crisis likely.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the impacts of the war in Ukraine on international food security more acute. For countries not directly involved in the conflict, income support is a normal recourse in protecting consumers from war-induced international food price inflation. However, owing to pandemic-driven economic, countries’ budgets are weaker now. Government debts across advanced, emerging, and low-income developing countries have grown significantly from end-2019 to end-2020, with fiscal balances declining over this same period.

Even before the war, the world was already battling rising energy and food prices. Reduced economic activity in early 2020 translated to a reduced demand for oil, falling oil prices, and oil producers cutting production growth targets. By 2021, though, when economies reopened, oil demand for electricity generation in coal plants increased by 9 percent, causing energy prices to rise. Energy price inflation led subsequently led to higher prices of energy-intensive fertilizers, thus feeding into higher food prices.

Furthermore, countries were already seeing farming disruptions in early 2020, with the fall army worm destroying crops in Asia and Africa; the African swine fever infecting hogs in China and other Asian countries; and droughts and floods impacting grain-exporting countries like Pakistan and Thailand. Pandemic lockdowns further induced crop productivity losses by disrupting planting and harvesting schedules, further driving up food prices.

By mid-May 2022, global prices were already 30 percent higher than in the previous year. Significant importers of grains, fertilisers and oils from Ukraine and Russia. Countries in North Africa and Western/Central Asia, which source more than 30 percent of wheat from the two countries, immediately felt the impacts.

Ongoing climate-related challenges further exacerbates the war-induced food insecurity. Conflict zones hit by climate shocks have experienced more severe and acute food insecurity, seen in 14 out of 34 food crisis countries in 2017.

Within Ukraine, temperatures in the past 60 years have risen at a rate faster than Europe, and sometimes even faster than the world’s. While wheat and soybean are relatively resilient against changing climates, crops like barley, maize and sunflower are estimated to see significant declines in yields in the next 10-30years. Khersonska, one of the oblasts attacked by Russia in eastern Ukraine, is among the top five oblasts projected to be most impacted.

Hunger can fuel further tensions, either intercommunal and cross-border.

Less than a week into Russia’s invasion, 141 countries voted for a UN resolution demanding Russia to end the war as soon as possible. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has requested the West’ to help “close the sky”. Multiple military, diplomatic, and economic measures have been rolled out to force Russia’s hand to halt its invasion. However, ongoing measures have only resulted in gradual shipments of military equipment that fall far short of providing Ukraine full protection.

Countries fear that a harder stance may harm their own security and economic interests. This has led countries like India and China to take calibrated, business-as-usual approaches with Russia. While Indonesia has condemned Russia’s aggression, it has not acceded to Ukraine’s request for military assistance. Instead, it has taken the role of mediator as Group of 20 president, with President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo visiting presidents Putin and Zelensky and urging Russia to stop the war immediately based on food security concerns.

Western leaders have similarly expressed their wishes of not wanting to see Russia win the war. Yet even the United States, which has disbursed approximately US$4.6 billion security packages as of June 2022, has started to recognize that this may not be enough to help Ukraine defend its territorial integrity. There is growing concern of a military stalemate as neither Russia nor Ukraine is likely to make major territorial gains.

The UN-brokered negotiations have led to a recent removal of blockades of Ukrainian grains. While this was accompanied by signs of stabilizing global food markets threats to global food security go beyond simply resuming grain exports from Ukraine. The risk of a potential global food crisis leading to a significant destabilising impact on economies and societies around the world is a spectre that confronts us today.

At bottom, world leaders will need to earnestly consider putting an end to the war, against the ramifications of a potential global food crisis globally. The latter can be an equally, if not more, significant destabilizer to their countries from economic, political, and societal perspectives.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently lauded India’s food subsidies for their role in helping minimise the impacts of COVID-19 on food and economic insecurity. India avoided any increase in extreme poverty during the pandemic, whereas a March 2022 report by the Asian Development Bank notes that ASEAN member states saw an increase of 4.7 million people living in extreme poverty.

The IMF report highlights India’s Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana emergency safety net policy of distributing subsidised food to eligible households. This policy builds on India’s National Food Security Act through which the government allocates grain for subsidised redistribution to lower-income households. Seventy-five per cent of India’s rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population are eligible for subsidised redistribution.

Digital technologies play an important role in the National Food Security Act. India’s Aadhaar national identification system gives individuals a unique biometric digital identity. The World Bank touts this as the world’s ‘most expansive’ digital identification system, covering 1.3 billion people as of March 2022. Digital identities also reduce the misallocation of limited welfare resources to unintended beneficiaries, according to the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

India’s digital identity system supports the provision of food subsidies through its Digital Ration Card (DRC) system. Over 222 million DRCs have been issued as of March 2022. Approximately 200 million cards were issued to ‘priority households’ with low incomes and 20 million cards for households in extreme poverty. The DRC system is supported by electronic point-of-sale machines used for the accurate, electronic weighing of grain. Over 166 million tonnes of subsidised grain has been distributed by India’s fair price shops using this mechanism.

India’s success builds on its unique digitalisation of food distribution. Yet such initiatives are absent from ASEAN’s approach.

In 2021, the 43rd Meeting of ASEAN Ministers on Agriculture and Forestry endorsed the ‘ASEAN Guidelines on Promoting the Utilisation of Digital Technologies in the Food and Agriculture Sector’. Digitalisation in ASEAN member states has been focussed on enhancing food security and supply chain stability while maintaining laissez-faire market settings. The digitalisation of food production aims to use ‘smart farming’ technologies, including Internet of Things technologies, to boost crop productivity amid changing agroclimatic environments.

The digitalisation of ASEAN member states’ supply chains includes using e-commerce platforms to help farmers increase their income by selling directly to consumers and traceability technologies to assure food quality and safety. ASEAN member states’ policies contribute to greater food availability and affordability by helping farmers increase their productivity and market competitiveness.

India is also pursuing pockets of digitalisation in food production and supply chains through digital farmer advisory, e-commerce and traceability. What distinguishes India is its expansive subsidised grain distribution system that supports its nation-wide DRC system. This system is not governed by laissez-faire principles alone, it is also supported by food security objectives.

India’s low GDP per capita of around US$2000 means it is loath to adopt a purely laissez-faire approach which risks having insufficient food stocks during disruptions — forcing reliance on expensive imported grains. Instead, the Indian government intervenes in food production and supply chains to ensure sufficient domestic grain production and supplies. The government commits to purchasing any quality-standard crops farmers produce at a minimum support price that is recommended by India’s Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices.

Setting a higher minimum support price incentivises farmers to adopt agricultural technologies like fertiliser supplies and better-quality seeds. Still, it can also incentivise farmers to devote more water and land to subsidised crops like wheat, rice and sugar. This can increase the price of non-essential produce and lead to a less efficient use of resources and greater CO2 emissions.

The government’s Food Corporation India, which procures crops and manages India’s grain stockpiles, provides information on expected stockpile shortages owing to farming disruptions. This signals the need for the government to raise the minimum support price to bridge potential food supply gaps.

India’s combination of laissez-faire and food-security-focussed stockpile management minimises the country’s reliance on expensive grain imports. This allows India to subsidise a greater quantity of its domestically produced food. In contrast to India, ASEAN member states, which follow a purely laissez-faire approach, make no such grain purchasing commitments.

ASEAN is seeing successive disruptions to food supply beyond COVID-19, including rising food and energy prices and the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on food supply chains. India’s effective ‘shock-proofing’ of its food supply system should be closely investigated by ASEAN. But India’s food security approach is not readily applicable because ASEAN member states do not guarantee to purchase crops at pre-identified prices.

By not offering such a guarantee, ASEAN member states are effectively leaving farmers to decide how much food to produce. They are failing to ensure sufficient food supplies during disruptions, including the current Russia–Ukraine war and the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, security of supply is another consideration and India, relying heavily on domestic production, may find itself exposed to natural disaster or climatic risks that leave it looking for imported food from elsewhere.

With these costs in mind, it is worth re-evaluating the merits of the current laissez-faire approach to food security and whether alternative approaches like India’s could improve ASEAN member states’ preparation for future disruptions.

A version of this article was first published here in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies Commentary.

Jose Ma Luis Montesclaros is Research Fellow with the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

As countries around the world are learning to co-exist with Covid-19, the implications of the pandemic for policy management of varied issues facing them should not be overlooked. Disaster governance is one of the sectors that have been significantly affected by pandemic-related restrictions and resource constraints. Climate change further increases the complexity and challenges in disaster governance.