Agriculture is placed as the centerpiece of Shizo Abe’s package of economic policy, known as Abenomics. Since his return to the president of the Liberal Democratic Party in September in 2012, Shinzo Abe has repeatedly expressed his high expectation on Japan’s agriculture as one of the most promising industries.   Abe argues that agricultural income should be doubled and agricultural exports should be tripled if its fill powers are exerted. Abe claims that the major stumbling block for agriculture is too much political power of the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives, popularly called Zenchu, which is an apex body of Japan's system of agricultural co-operatives. Among Japanese mass media, Zenchu has been described as one of the most powerful voting groups for the Liberal Democratic Party. According to Abe, Zenchu is only concerned in its own vested interests and prevents innovation in the agricultural industry. In the current session of the Diet, Abe has submitted new bills to reduce the power of Zenchu. Taking the responsibility for failing to persuade Abe to realize how Zenchu has promoted agricultural development,  Mr. Akira Banzai, the president of Zenchu, has resigned. Abe’s agricultural policy makes a sharp contrast with the traditional agricultural policy in the successive LDP’s governments (including the first Abe cabinet from 2007 to 2008).  Why does Abe take such an unfriendly attitude to Zenchu? Is really Zenchu is so harmful for the agricultural industry? Does Japanese agriculture really have such high potentials? Why did Abe change agricultural policy so drastically after the resignation of the first cabinet? By examining these questions, the speaker explains a new and tricky dynamics of Japanese agriculture. The speaker reveals the fact that, contrary to mass media’s popular image of ‘ever strong Zenchu,’  Zenchu’s political power started declining in the middle of 1990s and sharply dropped in the late 2000s. The speaker also describes that political groups of the manufacturing and commercial industries, which support Abenomics, are now becoming more and more active in staring agriculture-related businesses for the purpose of receiving agricultural subsidies.  The speaker points out that agricultural subsidies are now used as a cover for the implicit collusion between the current Abe government and the political groups of manufacturing and commercial industries: i.e., instead of Zenchu, manufacturing and commercial sector are cow becoming the major recipients of agricultural subsidies.

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Industrial clusters are ubiquitous in history and the contemporary developing world. While many of them grow dynamically, others stagnate. This study explores factors affecting the success and failure of cluster-based industrial development based primarily on own case studies conducted in East Asia, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa as well as historical studies in Japan and Europe. It is found that the key to the successful development is multi-faceted innovations, encompassing technical and managerial innovations or improvements. Since innovative ideas spill over, collective actions which attempt to internalize externalities often play a role in sustainable development of industrial clusters. An implication is that stagnant clusters can be vitalized if multi-faceted innovations can be stimulated by policy means.   

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He was a core member of World Development Report 2013: Jobs. He was also President of International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) from 2009 to 2012. He received Purple-Ribbon Medal from the Japanese Government in 2010.

He has been conducting comparative analyses on cluster-based industrial development, poverty and income distribution, land reform and land tenure, and Green Revolution between Asia and Africa. He published 123 articles in refereed international journals and 23 coauthored and coedited books. He is Fellows of International, American, and African Association of Agricultural Economists.

Please note event's venue has changed to the Philippines conference room

Conditions of Entry:

Valid photo ID required all of attendees

No posters are allowed

No noise makers are allowed

On the surface, Thai-China relations have never been better, as the two countries work to raise their ties to a higher and broader plane. A five-year plan for strategic cooperation now under negotiation covers political, military, and security affairs; multi-sectoral trade and investment; health, education, information, technology, and culture; and regional and multilateral foreign policy. China is comfortable working with the military government that has ruled Thailand since 2014, and vice versa.

Beijing credits the exercise of Chinese “soft power” in Southeast Asia with having improved Thai views of China. Analysts characterize the warming as a new version of Thailand’s old habit of adapting to powerful outsiders by “bending with the wind.” Prof. Pavin will argue that, although the application of soft power has helped China’s cause in Thailand, it is not the main reason for the present warming of ties between the two countries. Indeed, in the long run, Chinese soft power could prove disastrous for Thailand.

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Abstract: The term "natural disasters" diminishes the key role that the human context plays in turning a natural event into a disaster. In this talk, I present scientific insights into the physical processes governing the onset and evolution of extreme events and discuss how this improved understanding the challenges and opportunities that these present for decision-makers and communities at risk. More specifically, I will focus on three disasters of special current relevance, ice-sheet disintegration, coastal risk and injection-induced seismicity. The common denominator of what at first glance might seem like disparate systems is multiphase flow. The dynamic interactions between multiple solid and fluid phases, such as ice and melt-water; vegetation and waves; rocks and wastewater; give rise to drastic nonlinearities that govern abrupt changes in system behavior reflected in extreme events.

ABSTRACT

By now, those following the news on Syria have been saturated with analysis, data, information, and misinformation on developments there since 2011. Yet we observe an increasing gravitation to mutually exclusive narratives that adorn websites and publications on the situation in Syria: (a) the narrative of pure and consistent revolution versus that of (b) external conspiracy/designs on Syria. Both narratives carry grains of truth, but are encumbered by maximalist claims and fundamental blindspots that forfeit various potentials for enduring cease-fires and/or transitions, let alone mutual understanding. This talk will address these competing narratives in the context of international escalation marked by increasing US-Russian tension and continued multi-layered conflicts on the battlefield. It closes with addressing a framework for understanding and gauging potential prospects despite conflicting declarations by all parties involved.

SPEAKER BIO

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*This event is supported by the Stanford Initiative for Religious and Ethnic Understanding and Coexistence

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Abstract:

On the eve of primaries on the Right in November and for the Socialist Party in January, the French presidential campaign for the April/May 2017 elections is now in full swing. The political landscape is bleak indeed: both major political parties are profoundly divided and fragmented; the incumbent party has suffered a string of defeats since 2012 in municipal, European and regional elections and whoever its candidate(s) may be, he/she will most probably not qualify for the run-off in May, guaranteeing the election of Alain Juppé or Nicolas Sarkozy in the spring. The terrorist attacks in Paris and Nice have accelerated the drift towards identity politics as the extreme right finds validation of its favorites themes on immigration and the supposed radical incompatibility between Islam and the French republican compact; the attacks also stand as a major cause for the implosion of the Socialist Party. Beyond the context (high unemployment levels and a slow, sputtering economic recovery, Brexit, the terrorist threat...), this form of political chaos has institutional roots as the republican model designed by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 is no longer adapted to the challenges France is facing today. This lecture will attempt to unpack the topical from the structural in the long descent of France towards political dysfunction and assess the possible scenarios for political reform.

Speaker Bio:

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**Co-sponsored with the Bill Lane Center for the American West**

Conflicting views of international law versus national interest are churning the South China Sea. In The Hague on 12 July 2016, an Arbitral Tribunal ruled in favor of the Republic of the Philippines and against the People’s Republic of China regarding the latter’s claims and behavior in the South China Sea. Beijing has denounced the decision and refuses to abide by it. The Philippines’ new and outspoken president has refused to press China toward compliance, seemingly preferring to seek economic benefits from China instead. The US and Japan, among other countries, have supported the ruling, but in a muted fashion, as if to avoid antagonizing China. 

Did the Arbitral Court do the right or the wrong thing? Did the judges (in)correctly interpret the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)? Has the unwillingness of Manila and Washington to champion the court’s decision made the prospect of Beijing’s eventual dominance in Southeast Asia more likely? Has China’s self-assigned and so far successful impunity undermined global compliance with UNCLOS? Or does Beijing’s pragmatic emphasis on realpolitik over moralpolitik point the way toward a practical alleviation of tensions that global jurisprudence cannot achieve? And what if the court’s ruling were applied to other sweeping maritime claims to land features in the Pacific, including the exclusive economic zones drawn by Tokyo around Okinotorishima or by Washington around its mid-ocean “Minor Outlying Islands”? Would the US comply? And lastly: What next?

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Jay L. Batongbacal