PROGRESS AND CHALLENGES IN

ACHIEVING
THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
IN EAST ASIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Syed Nuruzzaman
ESCAP Presentation 
13 July 2010, Shanghai

The views expressed in this presentation are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views
or policies of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), its Board of
Directors, or the governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in
this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences of their use. Terminology used may not
necessarily be consistent with ADB official terms.
¾Progress in achieving the MDGs with a
focus on education, health and environment.

¾Key Challenges and Options: The big

Picture

¾Key Challenges and Options: Some

Sectoral Perspectives
 Uneven and mixed progress

¾ Region as a whole has achieved or is achieving

some targets but not others

¾ Disparities across sub-regions and countries in

progress towards achieving the goals

¾ Disparities within countries

¾ New challenges posed by economic crisis

 Impressive regional progress

Asia-Pacific as a whole has achieved

targets in:
¾Halving proportion of people without access to safe
drinking water
¾Reducing gender disparities in primary & tertiary
education
¾Stopping the spread of HIV & AIDS, TB

… and is on track to:

¾Halve extreme poverty (by $1.25-a-day poverty line)
¾Provide universal access to primary school
¾Achieve gender parity in secondary education
 Large scale deprivation remains

Asia-Pacific is home to:

¾1.3 billion rural population without basic sanitation (or over 70% of
world’s total rural population)
¾98 million children under 5 years suffering from malnutrition
(equivalent to 70% of world’s children under-five)
East and North-East Asia, proportion of
reported indicators for which countries are
off track
Uneven progress across sub-regions
 Achieving Universal Primary
Education
¾ AP 94 percent of children enrolled in primary education
¾East Asia will reach the goal of universal education by 2015
¾New & Innovative ways - Mongolia's ‘tent schools’
¾However, trends have been mixed for primary education
- In East Asia, enrolment rates went down since 1990
- In South-East Asia, an initial decline in 1990s was
followed by marginal increase
Maternal mortality ratios
 South-East Asia, proportion of reported
indicators of which countries are off track
Ratio of under-five mortality rates, girls to boys
Under-5 Child morality by wealth
quintile, selected countries
Relationship between a mother’s
education and child survival
Under-five mortality – rural-urban rates
selected countries
Less-educated mothers, higher child
mortality

¾ Under-5 mortality is consistently higher among mothers who

did not finish primary schooling across countries
 Environmental Sustainability

• Asia and the Pacific as a whole poor record

• In East Asia, growth brought rapid increase in CO2
emission from 2.9 billion metric tons 1990 to 6.1 billion
metric tons in 2005
• Largest CO2 emission per unit of GDP
• Over the same period, CO2 emission tripled in
Southeast Asia from 0.4 to 1.2 billion metric tons
• However, per capita emission still much lower than that
of in developed countries
 Sanitation facilities

• In Southeast Asia, coverage increased from 50% in 1990

to 67% in 2006
• In Southeast Asia, population without access to
sanitation came down to 219 million in 1990 to 187 in
2006
• 156 million people gained access, making it possible for
SEA to reach 2015 target
• In 4 of the 11 SEA countries, coverage is less than 60
percent
• In EA, access to safe drinking water and sanitation is
high except in Mongolia and DPRK
 Safe Drinking Water

• In SEA, access to drinking water went up from 73% in 1990 to 86%

in 2006, yielding an additional 165 million people
• Number of people without access fell by 41 million from 119 million
to 78 million
• Was close to reaching the target in 2006
• Only 3 countries in SEA had coverage less than 75%
• In EA, Mongolia is the only country that has 40% of its people
without access to piped water
• In rural area, it is only 20%
• In China, situation is under stress due to rapid economic growth and
urbanization
• Desertification is also a huge problem
 Key Challenges and Options:
The Big Picture
• Growth not sufficiently pro-poor: inequality rising
• Rebalancing growth in light of post GFC
• Sub-national disparities
• Hunger spots: how to eliminate these?
• Gender inequality: unfinished agenda e.g. representation in policy
making
• Huge gap in secondary education: not conducive to creating a
“knowledge economy”
• Serious environmental stress: greening growth
• Huge infrastructural weaknesses in LDCs and LLDCs
• Service Delivery: needs a comprehensive approach
• Social protection: extremely patchy
• Weak agency: state and non-state actors
 Key Challenges and Options:
Some Sectoral Perspectives
Universal Primary Education

• Financing gap
• Policy and planning
• Data gaps
• Capacity strengthening
• Integrated approaches
 Key Challenges and Options: Some
Sectoral Perspectives (contd)
Health
• Health Systems strengthening: policy environment,
financing, elimination of user fees, HRD
• Integration and synergy across MDGs
• Continuum of care
• Addressing the underlying social determinants
• Prioritize regions and social groups
• Partnerships
• Community-based care and involvement
• Access to health information
• Social Health Protection
 Key Challenges and Options: Some
Sectoral Perspectives (contd)
Environmental Sustainability: CO2, Water and
Sanitation

• Positive economic incentives in reducing CO2 emission:

REDD mechanism
• Reliable and affordable energy
• Promoting energy efficiency
• Financing gaps
• Climate change: a new development paradigm
Key Challenges and Options: Some
Sectoral Perspectives (contd)
Improved drinking water
• Going beyond urban sector and involving the private sector
• Harnessing the power of partnerships: global initiatives and
partnerships
• Pay greater attention to institutional and governance issues
• Addressing the critical gaps
¾ Reaching the unserved population in rural areas
¾ Water quality, reliability and increased piped connections
¾ Reverse decreasing coverage in urban areas
¾ Financing
¾ Greater private investment to off-track countries
¾ Better knowledge of all water expenditures
Key Challenges and Options: Some
Sectoral Perspectives (contd)
Sanitation
• Scaling up demand driven approaches
• Behaviour interventions
• Create customer awareness, knowledge and
understanding to increase uptake of latrine building and
use
• Develop capacity of new sanitation industry
• Allow private sector participation
• Public-private-NGO partnerships
• Better inter-ministerial coordination
• Political will
Thank you.