The East-West Center’s interdisciplinary Research Program addresses issues of policy significance in a comparative context, focusing on challenges of common concern to the Asia Pacific region and the United States. The Center’s collaborative research and policy analysis promote better relations and understanding among the nations of the region and the United States and contribute to capacity development and institution building. Working with organizations throughout the region, the Research Program provides information, analysis, and expertise in support of all the Center’s programs. Work is organized into four study areas: Politics, Governance, and Security; Economics; Environmental Change, Vulnerability, and Governance; and Population and Health.
Highlights
Politics, governance, and security
The Asian International Justice Initiative (AIJI) is a collaborative project between the East-West Center and the U.C. Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center. Since 2003, the two centers have worked together on justice initiatives and capacity-building in the human-rights sector, focusing on Southeast Asia. To date, AIJI has conducted training, monitoring, and community outreach projects in connection with the Khmer Rouge trials in Cambodia, East Timor, and Indonesia, including Papua. The Initiative also works at the regional level to support the work of the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights, and the Human Rights Resource Center for ASEAN. In addition, AIJI conducts an annual Summer Institute for International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
The Asia-Pacific Governance and Democracy Initiative (AGDI) is a multi-year project that conducts international workshops and publishes books and policy briefs on important governance and democracy topics in the Asia-Pacific region. Current work focuses on issues of local governance and public-administration reform. In addition, AGDI works with the East-West Center's Seminars Program on a Pakistan-United States Journalists Exchange program and with the environment study area on a comparative study of urban-development issues in India and Pakistan.
Other research looks at China's economic growth and rising status as a world power, focusing on the implications of these developments for peace and stability in the region. This work includes analysis of China's transition towards an internationally open market economy and assessment of the prospects for peace or conflict in the South China Sea.
Economics
Economics research at the East-West Center examines technology innovation in China, including both the Chinese government's innovation policies and the innovation capabilities and strategies of China-based high-tech firms. One objective is to assess the implications of China’s innovation push for the United States. Interviews with key players are used to examine Chinese policies on intellectual property rights, government procurement, and the use of standardization as a tool of innovation policy.
Other research provides timely analysis of energy markets in the Asia Pacific region, with special emphasis on oil and natural gas. This analysis is of critical interest to businesses, government agencies, and others concerned with regional energy markets. The geographic focus is on major energy producers and consumers in Asia, as well as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies. Energy research at the East-West Center also includes a special focus on economic and policy issues related to energy development in China.
A collaborative project focuses on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, currently under negotiation among the United States and eight other countries. This is an ambitious effort to sustain and invigorate America's economic linkages with the dynamic economies of the Asia Pacific region. Combined with other emerging trade agreements in the region, the TPP could pave the way for a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), with considerable economic benefits.
Environment, vulnerability, and governance
The Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment Program (www.PacificRISA.org) supports integrated research across the social and physical sciences to expand the options of decision-makers facing climate variability and change. Pacific RISA is one of 11 programs in the United States funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The team at the East-West Center has taken a lead role in the production of the Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment (PIRCA), bringing together almost 100 scientific experts and practitioners to generate an integrated report that can be used by communities to create more sustainable and environmentally sound plans in multiple spheres.
Center scholars conduct collaborative research on economic development and environmental change in South and Southeast Asia. This work links social-science data collected at household and community levels with remotely sensed and other spatial data to study both the driving forces behind land-use change and the impact on forest cover, agrarian transitions, urbanization, new and re-emerging diseases, and other variables. One project investigates the influence of development on emerging infectious diseases, looking specifically at avian influence in Vietnam. A second project looks at the expansion of rubber cultivation in the uplands of Cambodia, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Vietnam, and China's Yunnan Province and analyzes the impact on water, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration.
Other environmental research focuses on the problems of unplanned urban growth around Asia's largest cities. One project addresses the growing challenges that Asia's large coastal cities face as a result of climate change, and another compares urban environmental issues in India and Pakistan.
Population and health
More than a decade ago, the East-West Center began developing two computer models for use in analyzing the spread of HIV/AIDS—the Asian Epidemic Model (AEM) and the UNAIDS Estimation and Projection Package (EPP). Today, software developed at the Center enables national health programs to analyze their local HIV epidemics and develop effective policy responses. Beginning in Thailand and Cambodia and extending to Burma (Myanmar), Hong Kong, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam, Peru, and Ukraine, collaborative research teams have investigated the dynamics of the epidemic and have helped develop successful prevention strategies. Researchers are now producing updates of multiple modeling tools, supporting the UNAIDS Data Hub for Asia and the Pacific, and drafting a regional report on Modes of Transmission for Asia in collaboration with UNAIDS Geneva and the UNAIDS Regional Support Team for Asia and the Pacific.
The National Transfer Accounts (NTA) project, now in its seventh year, is a collaboration between the East-West Center, the Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California Berkeley, and national and regional organizations around the world. With 37 member countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, the NTA project is developing a system to measure economic flows across age groups. By providing estimates of income, consumption, saving, and both public and private transfers for specific age groups, NTA adds an important dimension to measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other widely used economic indicators. These estimates provide insights into the financial and welfare consequences of alternative policies on taxation, pensions, healthcare, education, and other social programs.
Another long-term research focus at the East-West Center has been on family change in Asia and the United States. Changes in marriage, fertility, and childrearing have profound implications for both family life and public policy. These developments have occurred in the context of major structural changes in economies, education systems, and other institutions. This project examines attitudes and behavior in relation to education, marriage, divorce, cohabitation, childbearing, childcare, employment, and relationships with parents and children using survey data from Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries as well as the United States.