The Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) was established in May 2000 and provides direct grant assistance to the poorest and most vulnerable groups in developing member countries (DMCs) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) while fostering long-term social and economic development. The grants target poverty reduction initiatives with the direct participation of nongovernment organizations, community groups, and civil society. In 2009, the Government of Japan and ADB expanded the scope of JFPR to include provision of support to DMCs through capacity development, policy and advisory, research and development, and project preparatory technical assistance.
Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.
This report provides key information about the 2020 financial operations of trust funds, global funds and special funds administered by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). It includes an assessment of how these trust funds helped ADB’s developing member countries respond to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The contribution made by the funds to the operational priorities of ADB’s Strategy 2030 is also discussed.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis hit the region and became a defining moment for Asia and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). As ADB participated in coordinated crisis responses, Asian policy makers used this opportunity to reassess their economic policies in a fundamental way. This volume presents how ADB met the challenges during the fourth decade of designing strategies to respond to rapid changes in the region following the Asian financial crisis, and responding to the changes in international development thinking. Several important policies and strategies were approved, including ADB's Poverty Reduction Strategy as well as ADB's first Long-Term Strategic Framework to 2015. ADB embarked on two major reorganizations (in 2002 and 2006) and committed to an internal reform agenda to be a more responsive, relevant, and results-oriented organization. ADB also took a proactive role in postconflict reconstruction in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Timor-Leste. ADB also needed to respond to a series of external shocks such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic in 2003, the Asian tsunami in 2004, and the Pakistan earthquake in 2005.
This edition compiles books, reports, and guides published by the Asian Development Bank in 2014. These cover topics such as agriculture, food security, education, energy, environment, financial sector, and gender equality. Titles are classified under broad and cross-cutting themes in development and poverty reduction in Asia and the Pacific. Most of these publications may be downloaded for free from the Publications page (www.adb.org/publications). Hard copies of listed titles, including this publications catalog, may be requested or ordered online; or through the Public Information Center at ADB headquarters in Manila. Orders can also be placed through our commercial distributors, booksellers, and copublishers when indicated in the publication's description.
This book is a must read for researchers and students interested in poverty, poverty reduction, social welfare and development. It provides systematic and comparative studies on the design features, achievements and problems of targeting, set against specific national contexts. The economic focus of the analysis is balanced with sections on the political economy of targeting and management aspects (administrative systems and incentives). While the considerable variations between targeting mechanisms, schemes and contexts demonstrate the difficulties of blanket policy prescriptions, the book presents a fascinating conclusion. Rather than continuing the debate about universal versus targeted approaches, it proposes that a mixed approach might be best: the broad targeting of basic services such as primary education and health care combined with the narrow targeting of social protection schemes for the very poor. David Hulme, University of Manchester, UK Most governments attempt to target resources directly at the poor through a variety of measures including food and credit subsidies, job creation schemes and basic health and education projects. These measures are usually classified as being either promotional (to help raise welfare in the long term), or protectional (to support the poor in times of adverse shocks). However, for many Asian countries the reality of these poverty targeting measures has proved disappointing. Following a comprehensive overview by the editor, this book offers a detailed assessment of the results of directly channelling resources to the poor and extensively discusses the experience of five Asian countries India, Indonesia, the People s Republic of China, the Philippines and Thailand. The authors demonstrate how in many cases these targeting measures have failed due to their high cost and errors of both undercoverage (where many of the poor are excluded) and leakage (when many of the better-off also benefit from these schemes). The authors conclude that whilst poverty targeting remains a critically important objective, past targeting errors must not be forgotten and improved methods of both identifying and reaching the poor must be implemented. Written by leading experts in the field and including analysis of original country surveys, this seminal text documents clearly the operation and success of aid schemes in Asia. This book will make a worthy addition to the literature on development, poverty reduction, social welfare and Asian studies. It will also be an important source of reference for academics and students of economic development, aid practitioners, government officials and development NGOs.
The third Sustainability Report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) offers easily accessible information on ADB’s policies, programs, and practices as they relate to the social and environmental sustainability of development in Asia and the Pacific, and on changes in this work that have occurred since ADB published its second Sustainability Report, in 2009. The report also documents ADB’s continuing efforts to minimize its corporate environmental impact, especially at its Manila headquarters. For comparability, ADB’s current Sustainability Report is structured similarly to its first two. All three reports respond to the latest guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative while adapting to the particular characteristics of ADB’s work and the many different audiences interested in the information presented.
