Economic Development and Natural Resource Management in South and East Asia

1. Introduction
Eradicating world poverty is the greatest challenge of our age, and the greatest weapon we have to fight poverty is knowledge.

James D. Wolfensohn, President, The World Bank (2002)

More than half the world population lives in South and East Asia. During the past half a century, Japan has developed into the second-largest economic power in the world, in terms of gross national income (GNI), and the fifth in terms of per capita income of its population. Other countries, such as the Republic of Korea, Malaysia and Thailand are rapidly increasing their GNI well as their per capita incomes. In addition, India and, in particular, China are emerging as major economic powers in the region. At the same time, however, the largest number of absolute poor in the world, with a relative purchasing power below 1 dollar a day, live in South Asia, and poverty in the Asian region is widespread and persistent. Also, high population densities, limited natural resources, poverty in rural areas and rapid, often unbalanced economic development in urban areas result in increasing pressure on the natural resources in many countries and on the quality of the environment in the region.

The objectives of this paper are (a) to highlight some of the trends in economic development as well as in environmental and natural resource management in the region that may be expected on the basis of data available from the World Bank (WB, 2000b) and (b) to indicate where knowledge, in particular, space science and technology (e.g., remote sensing) and geo-informatics, could play a role in developing options for poverty alleviation, sustainable management of natural resources, and for monitoring and improving environmental quality.

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