Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development Journal - Volume 29, Issue 2, 2022

The present paper gives an assessment of the challenges faced by the workforce in Asia and the Pacific and how they can be overcome. For this assessment, the impact of global megatrends, such as climate change, digitalization and rapid ageing, is anticipated, and a multisectoral approach required to build the workforce to achieve inclusive and sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific is laid out. This approach is based on measures to improve access to decent work and extend universal social protection and universal health coverage, and concrete recommendations are provided to guide policy implementation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated an unprecedented call for global solidarity, which has included a proposal to waive key obligations under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The governance of intellectual property in a global health crisis entails consideration of the effective and coordinated agency of domestic governments to foster solidarity through practical action. This paper presents the context for solidarity while taking in consideration its practical operation by focusing on the mechanism of interaction between the intellectual property system and access to medicines, historically and during the pandemic: authorization of the use of patented subject matter without right holders' consent.

The rise in trade measures on pharmaceutical products has become a matter of intense debate since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. By October 2022, more than140 export restrictions had been placed on them worldwide; at least 50 directly affected vaccine production and distribution. A systematic assessment of their welfare effects offers a way to classify the plethora of trade measures in the global pharmaceutical sector with an explanation of their use in different jurisdictions worldwide. It also provides an assessment and indicates advances on ways in which such trade measures can be used in the interest of local production and public health.

This study contains an analysis on trade and trade barriers related to vaccines and vaccine inputs in the Asia-Pacific region. The results indicate that that there was significant intraregional trade in vaccine inputs during the period 2000–2020. While vaccines remained duty free or at low tariffs in many countries within this region, several non-tariff measures from the pre-COVID-19 period still continued. The secondary data research is supplemented with the findings from a survey of stakeholders concerned with vaccine production and trade in India. The following are recommendations based on the study: diversification of import sources of vaccines and vaccine inputs; lowering of tariffs; reduction in export restrictions; and the use of trade agreements to ease trade restrictions.

The economic and health recovery of countries in the Asia-Pacific region from the pandemic is hinged on the rapid and equitable deployment of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. However, in the initial years of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, highly unequal distribution of vaccines occurred across and within countries. Even though tight global supply was indeed an issue, health system challenges, particularly in terms of financing, service delivery, human resources, regulatory capacity and governance, played an important role in the inequitable deployment of vaccines. Recommendations given in this paper revolve around the importance of strengthening the health system to enable the equitable allocation and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

For many infectious diseases with a high burden in the Asia-Pacific region, there are no licensed, highly effective vaccines. In addition, for neglected infectious diseases in the region, the existing vaccines have limitations. One reason behind the lack of vaccines is a financing gap, especially for late-stage trials. We estimate that the annual financing gap for vaccine research and development (R&D) for neglected diseases is approximately $2 billion and the annual gap for vaccine R&D for emerging infectious diseases is approximately $50 million-170 million. In this paper, a variety of possible mechanisms to mobilize financing for vaccine R&D in the region are presented.

This paper provides analyses on social security systems data from seven Asian countries as per ILO Convention 102 of 1952, which merges social insurance and social assistance. The former covers the basic elements – unemployment, employment, injury, old age pension and maternity benefits –, the focus of this paper. Despite high levels of per capita income and rapid growth in a majority of Asian economies, the lack of social insurance (and hence the scale of informality in the workforce) is a matter of concern. Topics discussed in this paper are barriers to social insurance schemes for informal workers, as well as the way forward.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how fragile the global health product value chain truly is to respond effectively to public health emergencies, making it necessary to invest in research and the development of new technologies, scale up production of them and enable their rapid dissemination. Investing in local production has shown promise towards alleviating market concentration, which is putting global health security at risk. Efficient regulation is needed to ensure quality, safety and efficacy of health products. Pricing policies and procurement strategies should align with principles of equitable access and affordability. Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic must be applied and greater cooperation is required to strengthen health systems and improve interventions affecting all citizens.

The integration of ASEAN into the global, and especially regional, supply chains has been a major driver of economic growth, job creation and industrialization in the region. Given the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe, restoring supply chain connectivity and its resilience is of paramount importance to the Association. Apart from being agile, responsive and adaptive in this evolving environment, the strengthening of internal coordination to keep markets open and active engagement, in the spirit of open regionalism and multilateralism, with external partners is critical to ensure supply chains connectivity and resilience in the region.

Professor Clement Allan Tisdell was a distinguished academic and an unrelenting prodigious researcher. Above all, he was a friend and a wonderful human being. He died on 14 July 2022 at the age of 82. Born on 18 November 1939 near the New South Wales country town of Taree in Australia, Tisdell was the oldest of ten children (five boys and five girls) in a highly cohesive and supportive family. He had a very humble upbringing during which he attained an intimate familiarity with rural life, the countryside and nature, and a strong sense of belonging to the local community (Lodewijks, 2007), which continued to the very end of his life. No accolade could distract him from this path of simplicity and common sense.