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GISdevelopment > Proceedings > Map Asia 2002 > Keynote Session
It is unfortunate that the end of the cold war has not triggered a worldwide concerted effort to eradicate poverty and to implement the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including articles pertaining to good governance and democracy. The concept that globalization and free market principles would eradicate poverty has not been proven successful in reality: absolute poverty has declined in many areas, but the gap between rich and poor countries, and between rich and poor people in low- and middle-income countries has increased in many countries. It thus seems that globalization and free market principles have to be supplemented by international efforts in concert with national government policies and programmes aimed at alleviating poverty, empowering women and weaker sections of the society, and protecting the environment. There do not seem to be universally accepted definitions for terms such as "good governance" and thus it may even be more difficult to agree on ways to measure such phenomena in practice. Nevertheless, the concept of "good governance" seems important for governments to be effective in implementing policies aimed at sustainable development and poverty alleviation. One effort to measure an important aspect of "good governance" is "the corruption perceptions index" , which refers to the levels of perceived corruption in government and public administration and is published annually by Transparency International (www.transparency.org). Although the significance of this parameter and the associated ratings is, obviously, not universally accepted, it is rather unfortunate that all countries surveyed in the South and East Asian regions (Table 4) score 5.0 or less on a scale of 10 (lowest level of perceived corruption) to 0 (highest level of perceived corruption). Whatever the significance of these data may be, it is unlikely that low scores on the CPI scale will help to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of central government programmes aimed at poverty alleviation.
TABLE 4 : Rural environment, land use, inputs and productivity (World Bank, 2002b, Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3). Arable land includes land defined by the FAO as land under temporary crops, meadows for mowing or for pasture, land under market or kitchen gardens, and land temporarily fallow. Land abandoned as a result of shifting cultivation or land that could be developed into agricultural land are excluded from the classification "arable land", which is expressed as a percentage of total land area (excluding water bodies). Per capita arable land (ar land/cap) is expressed in hectares (ha) per head of the total population. Permanent cropland is land cultivated with crops that occupy the land for long periods and need not be replanted after each harvest, such as cocoa, coffee, rubber fruit trees and vines. This category excludes land under trees grown for wood or timber, and natural grasslands not used for pasture. Irrigated land (irr land) refers to areas purposely provided with water, including land irrigated by controlled flooding, and is expressed as a percentage of total cropland, that is, the sum of arable land and permanent cropland. Fertilizer consumption (fert cons) measures the quantity of plant nutrients used per unit of arable land (kg nutrient per hectare). Cereal yield, measured in thousands of kilograms of grain (= metric tons) per hectare of harvested land, includes wheat, rice, maize, barley, oats, rye, millet, sorghum, buckwheat, and mixed grains. Production data refer to crops harvested for dry grain only.
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