Don Gunasekera, Senior Economist, CSIRO, Canberra
The 2004 Asian tsunami illustrated the disproportionate impact that natural disasters have on poorer communities. More recent natural disasters in New Zealand, Japan, Australia and the US have shown that even well-to-do communities can be significantly hard hit by the impact of catastrophic and severe weather events. Preparing for natural disasters has many facets. They can range from adaptive response measures to the use of modern technologies to provide early warnings. A measure which is often talked about and seldom practiced is disaster risk management. In this regard, the recent mid-term review by the UNISDR of the Hyogo Framework for Action to substantially reduce disaster losses by 2015 is timely. A key message emerging from the UNISDR mid-term review is the need for economies to undertake proper disaster risk assessments that could help them to draw up better risk management plans which can be implemented by effective institutions with adequate resources in a well coordinated manner.
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Christopher Findlay
University of Adelaide & Vice-Chair AUSPECC
This article is cross-posted from the East Asia Forum website
Japanese politicians are still debating whether Japan should join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). TPP members are not allowed exclusions. Agriculture is the issue, specifically the domestic political constraints imposed by protection of that sector in Japan. At the same time, the business sector is pushing hard to join.
The TPP builds on the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement which Brunei Darussalam, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore set up in 2006. The TPP negotiating group now includes those four plus Australia, the US, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia. The Japanese debate brought the TPP back to the headlines and highlighted the questions about the value of the preferential route to trade and domestic reform.
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Preamble
Recognizing the access to adequate food sources as a fundamental requirement for human security and national security, we, the 2010 PECC Youth Delegation have compiled the following report in the hope that it may inform discussions within PECC in regards to the issue of food security.
Introduction
Recent food price hikes have drawn the attention of the world’s policy-makers and news media to food security. But what is “food security” and how can it be measured? For the purpose of this report we have adopted the definition of food security, as defined in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s 1996 Declaration on World Food Security:
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November 18th, 2009
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The food system is one of the economic sectors most sensitive to the potential consequences of price volatility. The expectation is that price volatility will continue for at least the near term. Public and private sector decision makers around the region need the best possible information to address this challenge.
This year’s report analyzes the underlying factors driving volatility; the potential nearterm implications for production agriculture, food security, and the broader food system; and the nature of measures and approaches that governments and the private sector might employ to reduce potential adverse economic impacts.
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