Address Rodolfo C. Severino, Secretary-General

of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,

at the ASEAN People’s Assembly

Bali, 30 August 2002

          This forum is called the ASEAN People’s Assembly.  It is, first of all, a people’s assembly.  Of course, when ASEAN leaders, ministers and officials meet and interact, agree and decide, they also represent, or are supposed to represent, the people of ASEAN.  So, when a gathering like this calls itself a people’s assembly, I take it that it is meant to serve as a vessel for articulating and conveying the people’s views and interests outside of the normal government or legislative or formal political channels.

          Why is this necessary?  Because the interests of many segments of the people, even numerically large ones, or even the interests of society as a whole, do not, all the time, find their way effectively through the normal governmental or formal political avenues into the decision-making process.  Sometimes, only the voices amplified by wealth, organization, personal connections, or even corruption, are heard.  So, we need civic associations to articulate and project the voices and interests of the poor, of minorities, of the marginalized, and, often, of the society at large -- to make sure that this is done.

          This gathering is also called an ASEAN assembly.  This indicates that civic associations and other non-governmental articulators of people’s interests need to get together as a region, as Southeast Asians.  This means that we recognize this need.  Such recognition is based on the reality that many of the people’s interests that are of concern to civic associations can be dealt with effectively only through regional consultations and regional action.

          In this, the role of ASEAN as an inter-governmental association and that of the ASEAN People’s Assembly intersect.  Let us look at some of the concerns that currently pre-occupy civic associations and others who have at heart the interests of the poor, the marginalized, the community and society as a whole.  Let us consider only a few:  The impact of globalization on the poor.  The problem of poverty.  The environment.

          First, globalization.  The revolution in information, communications and transportation technology, national policy and current international arrangements reinforce one another to bring about this situation:  More money and goods and, increasingly, services flow more freely through more parts of the world than ever before.  At its best, this brings enormous benefits to many people – greater efficiency in production, lower costs, broader choices for workers and consumers, more economic activity, more employment, better incomes.

          But we also know its bad effects – the disruption of production, commercial and employment patterns – and thus of people’s lives – the marginalization of those who do not have the required skills, whose skills have been rendered obsolete and who are slow or unable to acquire new ones.  We have also seen the manifold increase in the volatility of short-term capital flows and its capacity to devastate entire economies, often across entire regions and beyond.  The strain on the world’s natural resources is another concern.

          Clearly, much of the responsibility for cushioning the impact of globalization rests on national societies.  Indeed, the whole problem of poverty is the concern primarily of national societies, both in terms of the re-distribution of wealth and income within the society and in terms of national economic growth.

          Just as clearly, the international community, too, has grave responsibilities in this regard.  But we all know how difficult the struggle has been to extract from the rich countries measures to redress the imbalances in the opportunities to share in the world’s wealth and income.  Such measures, which, in many cases, are for the benefit of the people in the rich countries themselves, include those having to do with market access for the products of poor countries, technology transfer, technical assistance, concessional loans for infrastructure, and grants and other help for education, training and health.  The struggle goes on in the World Trade Organization and the series of high-level, global UN-sponsored conferences, the latest of which is the World Summit on Sustainable Development, currently going on.

          The international community, too, has a responsibility to re-shape the global financial architecture so as to decrease the volatility of capital flows and mitigate its impact.  Here, again, the un-rich have difficulty getting their voices heard.

          At the same time, particularly at this time of inchoate and uneven globalization, countries like those in Southeast Asia, must coalesce together as regions in order to withstand, perhaps even thrive in, the competitive onslaught that is a hallmark of globalization and in order more effectively to deal with the problem of poverty.  This is, to a large extent, what ASEAN is about.

          ASEAN is committed to integrating the regional economy through the free flow of goods, services and direct investments within the region.  In today’s global economy, an integrated regional economy is, for Southeast Asia, essential to expand markets, improve the efficiency of production, reduce costs, attract investments – from within each country, from within ASEAN, and from sources outside ASEAN – and thus stimulate economic activity, generate jobs and raise incomes.  All this is necessary for growth.  Without growth, and the investments that make it possible, we cannot reduce poverty or help the poor.

          ASEAN has taken a significant step toward regional economic integration by reducing tariffs on most trade within ASEAN to minimal levels through the ASEAN Free Trade Area.  But integrating markets and economies is more than about tariff-cutting.  We have to remove tariffs on intra-ASEAN trade altogether.  We have to do away with non-tariff barriers on trade among ASEAN countries.  We have to liberalize intra-ASEAN trade in services as a measure of economic integration and a tool for efficiency in production and lowering costs and prices.  We have to harmonize product standards and customs procedures.  We have to open up and strengthen transportation links.  We have to ensure the connectivity and compatibility of our telecommunications systems.

          Here, progress has been slow or, in some cases, stalled.  Some of the snags arise from concern over the welfare of state-run companies or of businesses owned by leading families or by the politically connected, which seek protection from competition from enterprises in other ASEAN countries.

          On the other hand, it is the people, particularly the poor, who will benefit most from closer regional economic integration.  They will gain from the efficiencies created, the economic activity stimulated, the costs reduced, the consumer choices widened, and the jobs created.  An integrated ASEAN – an ASEAN in closer solidarity – can also be of more effective help in the global struggles to redress the inequities of the international trading system and to re-shape the international financial architecture.

          Civic associations in Southeast Asia should thus find it worthwhile to push ASEAN and its member-states into closer and deeper regional economic integration that would, at the regional level, help achieve three goals close to their hearts – alleviating poverty, mitigating the adverse effects of globalization, and redressing the inequities of the global economic regime.  On all these counts, ASEAN and this people’s assembly have a common interest in regional economic integration.

          The same is true of environmental issues.  Each nation has a vital interest in protecting the environment.  The poor have a particular stake in it.  It is the poor, for example, who suffer most from floods and the diseases that they spawn.  It is the poor who lose their livelihoods when fishing grounds, forests and farms are destroyed.  It is the poor who are first hit by the degradation of sources of clean water.  It is the poor whose health is most damaged by foul air.  This is not to mention the direct and indirect impact of climate change and the loss of biodiversity on people’s health and livelihood.

          The international community, too, has a responsibility for the global environment, particularly in terms of carbon dioxide emissions that could result in global warming and the biodiversity necessary to sustain life.  It has the obligation to help the developing countries assume their responsibilities for the environment through, among other things, fairer international trade, the transfer of resources and technology, and other anti-poverty measures.  It is ASEAN’s view that the conservation of the environment and the struggle against poverty are intimately linked.

At the regional level, ASEAN obviously has a responsibility for the two areas of the environment that are trans-national in nature and should be regionally addressed – atmospheric pollution and the marine environment.

          ASEAN has made progress in dealing with the problem of the haze.  This is the haze that periodically arises from land and forest fires, many of them deliberately set on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.  At its worst, the haze envelops several parts of Southeast Asia, causing billions of dollars in economic damage to transportation, agriculture, livelihoods and tourism and much suffering on the part of hundreds of thousands of people in terms of health and children’s education.

          Largely in response to the particularly severe haze episodes of 1997-1998, ASEAN has put together and carried out a comprehensive program to monitor developments that could lead to fires and haze, enable the region to fight any fires that do break out, and mitigate their effects.

          The ASEAN Specialized Meteorological Center in Singapore has been strengthened.  Every day one can keep track of the haze, fires and hot spots through the ASEAN Website.  ASEAN has organized and trained multi-national fire-fighting teams and adopted a zero-burning policy.  We have undertaken persuasion sessions among plantation owners and forest concessionaires and mobilized local communities in the fight against the haze peril.  We have gone on education and consciousness-raising campaigns among the public.  Indonesia has successfully prosecuted a number of those guilty of setting fires.  The current episode of haze, arising particularly from fires on Borneo, although not yet as severe as the ones of 1997 and 1998, will be putting ASEAN’s, as well as Indonesia’s, capacity and resolve to the test.

          In June, ASEAN ministers concluded a landmark agreement committing their countries to prevent land and forest fires and to facilitate trans-national cooperative measures in fighting fires that take place.  ASEAN needs the active support of civic organizations and of the public in ensuring that the agreement is ratified and goes into effect and that its provisions are complied with in letter and spirit.

          With respect to marine pollution, ASEAN countries are participating actively in the multilateral initiatives for the protection of the marine environment in the seas of East Asia, including those of UNEP, ESCAP, UNDP, IMO and GEF.  ASEAN itself has drawn up marine water quality criteria and a system for the establishment of marine heritage areas.

On the environment generally, ASEAN needs the support and cooperation of, if not pressure from, civic associations, not only to help mobilize communities in the protection of the environment but also in overcoming the political obstacles and bureaucratic inertia in the way of effective regional cooperative action.

          In at least these two areas, then – regional economic integration and the protection of the environment -- ASEAN as an association and the ASEAN People’s Assembly have their interests converging.  The question is how the civic organizations can get the people’s views and concerns to ASEAN’s inter-governmental bodies.  One way is for the ASEAN People’s Assembly and/or its component organizations to conduct encounters with official ASEAN bodies.  This would have high symbolic value and strong public impact and serve to raise consciousness among ASEAN governments as a group.  The problem is how to slot such encounters into the increasingly tight schedules of ministers’ and officials’ meetings.

          Another, perhaps more effective way is for each national civic association to hold dialogues with its own government well before ASEAN meetings take place.  After all, national delegations go to ASEAN meetings with instructions and country positions already in hand.  Meetings with them beforehand would help shape those instructions and positions when it is still possible to do so.

          Still another way, which is not exclusive of the other two ways, is for ASEAN civic organizations to hold regular consultations with the ASEAN Secretariat.  We in the Secretariat do contribute to the ASEAN decision-making process, and the knowledge and the expertise, the wisdom and the passion, that reside in civil society would be of immense value to the Secretariat in its work.  At the same time, we could help in injecting civil society’s views and visions into ASEAN’s decision-making processes.

          I hope that we can bring such a partnership to reality.