 Hello and welcome to this Low Institute virtual event. My name is Roland Rader and I am the lead economist here at the Low Institute and host for today's session. Before we begin, as we are based in Sydney, let me start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which we meet virtually today and pay my respect to their elders past and present. The topic for our conversation today is does Southeast Asia need a new development model? Today's discussion follows an online debate published by the Low Institute focused on the same question in which we asked six of Southeast Asia's best and most interesting economic thinkers to contribute their thoughts on the future of the region. That publication is available on our website. For today, I'm glad to say I'm joined by several of those contributing writers to continue the conversation. First is Dr. Tricia Yeo, who is CEO of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs and Independent Public Policy Think Tank in Malaysia where she has previously held the positions of Chief Operating Officer and Fellow. Second, we have Vasuki Shastri, who is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House in London and has previously worked for Standard Chartered Bank, the International Monetary Fund and as a journalist in India, Singapore and Indonesia. He is also a best-selling author. His latest book published in 2021 is entitled Has Asia Lost It? Dynamic Past, Turbulent Future. And finally, we have Teza Mafira, who is the Director of the Indonesia Office of Climate Policy Initiative, where she leads a team of analysts studying climate finance, effectiveness and innovations for policymakers. She is also the Executive Director of the Indonesia Plastic Bag Diet Movement, a community-based organization which advocates for policies and awareness to reduce single-use plastics and which has seen her named as one of five global ocean heroes in 2018 by the United Nations. So Teza, Vasuki, Tricia, welcome to the Lowe Institute. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. It's a pleasure. So the topic for our conversation today is obviously this question around does Southeast Asia need a new development model? Now, many people might say that, well, Southeast Asia doesn't have a new development model. Obviously, one can take that position, but what we're looking for is to try and understand where does Southeast Asia come from and where is it headed and what are the challenges that it faces? So just to kick us off on this conversation, I might ask all of you, just if you can tell us how do you understand the strengths and weaknesses of what has been Southeast Asia's development model and approach to development to date? What has been good in the past and now what do you see as under challenge? Maybe if we can start with you, Vasuki. It's great to be here, Roland. I guess if you look at globalization, the types of globalization, Southeast Asia has been probably the single largest beneficiary. And of course, a lot of people will say looms very large in the way it has benefited from trade and investment, but China is also a continent-sized economy and trade has never been more than 20, 25% of GDP compared with many countries in Southeast Asia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia come to mind. Where trade has been the dominant driver of economic growth, inward investment has been also a central feature in how these economies are organized. So the critical question is you've had four, five decades of very strong economic growth because of these favorable times. What happens when these times reverse? And there's some evidence, geopolitical as well as economic that globalization, the kind of globalization wave that we've seen over the past few decades may well reverse. And this leaves an open question. Can Southeast Asia rebalance its economic growth away from trade and investment into finding domestic drivers of growth? And there are some countries I think who are already well there, Indonesia I think is a great example where it consumption has been a driver of growth for the last two decades, but many other countries need to catch up. So it's very difficult to come up with the one size all prescription. So if you look at the more open economies, I would say Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, they probably fall into the category of you need to find domestic drivers of growth. Arguably Singapore is gonna be much more difficult like they're given the size of its economy. I would say Indonesia and Philippines are much better positioned from a domestic driver perspective, but probably need to do more in driving investment and trade. So you've got this mixed bag of challenges and from the commentary that one reads from policy makers, they have seized that this needs to change. I guess the complexity is an execution. Thank you, Vasuki. Atresha, would you like to give your own views on this question? Vasuki has zeroed in on the globalization, de-globalization debate. Who would you say? Sure. So firstly, thank you to Lowy Institute for inviting me and my colleagues here both to contribute to the written piece as well as this forum today. So I think at the outset, before we even start talking about Southeast Asia as a region, a very important region, especially given the global trends of today, what is really important to point out is that Southeast Asia really cannot be seen with a homogenous lens or through a homogenous lens simply because as Vasuki alluded to earlier, each of our economies is exclusively drawn from a very different kind of history with different backgrounds, colonial backgrounds, constitutional backgrounds. And I think the economies themselves have taken various trajectories as well based on their own specific demographic makeups. So with that out of the way, I think we can still categorize some of our Southeast Asian economies into several different... So for example, one cannot compare Singapore's progress, for example, with that of Malaysia. And of course you have Vietnam and Thailand who have taken on different routes. And Laos and Myanmar still sort of lining behind. So that's just to start off with. So I think the question that you asked was Southeast Asia's development model, what approach has it taken and what are its strengths and weaknesses? So one thing that I pointed out in my written piece, Prolovi, was that many of the countries adopted this sort of industrialized model that approach taking, for example, a leaf out of the East Asian economies. In Malaysia, for example, which is the country that I am from and know best, the Prime Minister, Mahati Muhammad, then even had a look East policy looking at the examples of Japan and Korea. So very export driven. We wrote the wave of rapid industrialization, getting into manufacturing and also looking at some of our early commodities such as rubber and palm oil. So the strengths was that, especially throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, I think many of the Southeast Asian economies were very aggressive. We were driving forward in this industrialized, industrialist approach, export driven. And there are strengths to this model simply because we had and we continue to do have a very strong workforce, for example, labor is relatively cheap in the region, although that is changing. And this applied well for a while until of course, several of these financial crisis drugs. So I think I'll talk straight away about some of the weaknesses that we have seen in this development model that we've taken. So one of the weaknesses that I have also highlighted in the piece is that this rapid industrialization did not actually match with the sort of governance approach that perhaps some of the more developed countries were able to do in their earlier days of rapid industrialization. And these governance structures are actually starting to emerge, the weaknesses and perhaps the lack of a stable institutionalized approach that emerged very much so from the pandemic period over the last few years. And although we are emerging out of that pandemic, I think many of our economies in Southeast Asia are still grappling with these structural weaknesses. And we can talk a little bit more about what these weaknesses are and what we can do to improve them. But I think just contrasting between the aggressive industrialized approach versus the kind of lack of governance that perhaps the government of Southeast Asia were not able to emphasize or fully capitalize and optimize on in order to take the next growth truly forward. So I think I'll stop there for now, thank you. Yeah, it's kind of just a position between sort of hard economic development which has been very strong versus a lack of soft institutional development to go with it. I think is where you're zeroing in on. Now, you've talked a lot about industrialization. That's been a big part of the secret to Southeast Asia's success. It's also come with a lot of costs in terms of the impact on the environment. And I think this is something that Tisa now to bring you in, you've really focused on in your work but also in the piece you wrote for us. So can you tell us your views on this question of Southeast Asia's model to the extent there is one but more importantly, how it needs to change? Yeah, thanks, Roland. Well, I'll start with the strengths of ASEAN countries and I think my colleagues have alluded to this as well that we have enjoyed a growth, relatively stable growth of around 5% per year. This was before COVID-19. That changed a little bit but we're bouncing back. But I do think that there is something that hasn't been achieved with all that growth and that is equality because across Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Vietnam, there is a rise or at least persistent inequality. And that has shown itself in more exaggerated form during the pandemic where death tolls for the poor are higher than for wealthier citizens. And for example, children with no internet access have suffered from lack of remote schooling. And this has happened across Southeast Asia. So I think that the development model for ASEAN in the past has been more focused on trying to industrialize, looking at Western countries as a model, as a champion. But today we're already seeing the significant decline of Western industrialization models actually. We're already seeing in the US, in the UK, across Europe, wealth gaps, social gaps and a decline of overall wellbeing, which is pretty stark. So I don't think that that is because of an accident. I don't think that's because of a political or a governance failure because governance in the Western societies are pretty good. I think it is a failure of the economic system because of that very focus on industrialized, large-scale production and growth of consumption. So I think whether we like it or not, we have now come into an era where climate change is here and affecting us and affecting our economy. And we've also come to the realization that economic growth is limited whether we like it or not by the health of the ecosystems that provide us with balanced weather, with clean water, with clean air and other essentials for human existence. So I think the climate crisis really now prompts ASEAN to contemplate the limits to growth, the limits to industrialization. And if we agree that, you know, if growth is supposed to support our common welfare and if it's not doing that, we should ask why. And as I argue in my article for Loei, what we should be focusing instead of industrialization models is to develop a resilient economy. And I argue that a resilient economy is an economy that doesn't rely on linear industrialization, but more it is a very big transformation towards a circular economy model. I might just ask you to expand a little bit though, because I think it's very interesting that I think certainly you and others from the region have certainly put climate change up there as an issue that Southeast Asian nations need to deal with now, not in the future, it's an issue to deal with today. Governments, you know, the real world progress maybe is not that fast, but at least there are some committing to net zero, putting target dates down, trying to roll out renewable energy, emissions trading schemes and these sorts of things. But it's interesting because the, typically this is posed as attention, attention between dealing with climate change and decarbonizing economies and reducing emissions per capita, attention between that agenda and the development and the economic growth and development agenda. These are still countries which are not at rich country per capita income levels and so they should be allowed to pollute and transition in a slower sort of pace. Now, how do you respond to that? I mean, you're I think suggesting a different paradigm. Yeah, exactly because the focus is still on industrialization, that's why we have that tension. That's why dealing with the climate crisis has been framed as what can we do that doesn't sacrifice the economy? Whereas the framing should be whatever we do that sacrifices the environment will sacrifice the economy. So there's no way to work around this. And it's apparent in some models where, for example, in Indonesia, which I know best, the latest climate policy is to produce nickel, to produce car batteries. And because of that, Indonesia has issued 278 nickel mining licenses in the past two years alone. So that is heading towards a new problem, a new environmental problem. Whereas what could have happened from the outset is if they designed it as a circular economy model, then they would have realized that we don't actually have to produce as much extract as much nickel if we design it to be recyclable infinitely. And that's by design that has to be from the outset, it can't be an afterthought after 10 years of mining. So the resilient economies of the future will be those that don't rely on linear industrial models. Whatever the sector, whatever the commodity, it cannot be linear because those models, they deplete resources, they generate pollution and emissions, they do not factor external costs into their prices. Whereas a circular economy will mean that instead of using new materials, most of the things we produce should be recycled or should use recycled material, can be regenerated, can be repaired, can be reused. And it is all powered by renewable energy. Very little is extracted from the ground, very little will be disposed during production processes or at the end of a product's life cycle. And all of that will be apparent in the cost of a product as well. So all external costs will be factored into the price. I think then we'll see a very core transformation of the economy and not just surface level changes. Thank you. Thank you for that, Tiza. That's very well put. I think Tiza, I'm sorry, Tiza, Trisha, did you have a comment on this question? Yeah, I just wanted to say that I think that many of these things actually are coming together. So there's an increased pressure, I think, on businesses worldwide to eventually comply with ESG standards, right? So the environmental, social governance aspect of businesses. In fact, I'm also involved right now in a project where we're looking at a national action plan on business and human rights in Malaysia. So again, in Southeast Asia, very little has been done in creating or coming up with regulations and standards as to what businesses need to do better to comply with human rights with the human rights agenda. I think linking human rights to the language of human rights to the language of what traditional activists have done in the areas of environment, in the areas of labor and the social agenda, as well as in governance. I think this is still a weakness and we're trying to just narrow that gap as we speak today. But I also just wanted to emphasize that we don't necessarily have to think of governance and environment in separate circles. I think they can be mutually reinforcing in the sense that without governance, companies and countries themselves will not be able to create the right environment within which they can introduce better environmental standards across the board. So whether it's financial institutions, a large MNCs, I think the pressures, of course, are highest on the small SMEs, the small businesses, whether or not they're able to emerge with the right human resources, the right kinds of employees to understand these international standards that are being placed on them, especially from the import market. So I think these are new trends that we need to take into account. Definitely, climate crisis is there, but I also wanted to emphasize that we also need to look at our own Southeast Asian economies ourselves, the kinds of development projects that we are undertaking. Some countries looking at dams, for instance, which are certainly damaging on the environment as well as on the communities that are affected and whether or not there is capacity amongst our Southeast Asian governments themselves to be able to understand what it takes to undertake these large public infrastructure projects. So again, I think that tension still exists between we want to have development for our people, we want to build bridges, we want to build for our nations, but how do we do that without damaging the environment? And of course, now complying with these new, these newly defined international standards on ESG. So I just wanted to bring that into the picture. Thank you. Thank you, Tricia. I might ask Basuki if you have anything to add on this. I mean, you agree that there really isn't attention, to say perhaps between the need to reduce emissions and the need for ongoing economic development? I guess if you compare Southeast Asia with China and India, we've taken very, very bold steps in doubling down on renewables. And the puzzle for me really is, Southeast Asia has all the potential to really invest in renewables, to talk about industrial policy, to rally and mobilize efforts to move away from coal. And coal still accounts for on average, 70, 75% of the energy mixed in all of these countries. Not to say that coal still remains dominant in China and India, but in terms of solar, for example, both these countries have managed to bribe the cost down and there's very good steps being taken in integrating solar into the fuel mix. Now, can Southeast Asia do the same? I would argue, Indonesia should be in the lead in doubling down on renewables, really integrating this into the national development plan. This is not a defensive strategy. I would argue that renewables actually can be a driver of economic growth for many of these larger economies. And linked with this, I think, to what Tisa said on building climate resilience. Again, here, I think Southeast Asia, Southeast Asia is really prone to rising ground temperatures. The primary risk for Southeast Asia really is on devastating floods. So how do you build up that climate resilience while simultaneously changing your energy system? I would say that when we're talking about rebalancing, this should be in the mix. Thank you for that, Vasuki. I mean, obviously there's a lot of, there are a lot of challenges and you couldn't say anything other than Southeast Asia is at the beginning, all countries in Southeast Asia at the beginning of starting to think about these transitions and trying to start to try and do something about it. I mean, the question I suppose I'd like to put to all of you is the difficult question is where do you start and how do you generate momentum, particularly taking into account politics, taking into account the political economy of countries that are very much dependent on an industrialization-based model? Do you see any particular sort of green shoots or opportunities where there's opportunities to drive change and progress in the right direction? Tricia, I got to you maybe first. Yeah, this is a really interesting question. How do we incentivize ourselves to make the changes that are not necessarily politically palatable or even demand-driven? So our communities and society ourselves are not very well-educated as to the needs to move into this new growth era. So we know that politicians are ultimately incentivized by that. So I think that's a really crucial question that anyone who's in this field needs to ask ourselves. And once we have that answer, place that pressure on the necessary governments as well as regional institutions of the day, so including your ASEAN, your World Bank, other sorts of development institutions that do exist in our country. I think one answer that I have gotten recently from our own research in this area is that it ultimately does start from pressure from abroad. So this is something that I know can be a little bit of a sensitive subject because we like to believe that reforms come from within, that domestic reforms start first, and so on. However, in my experience in the country that I know best again in Malaysia, I'll give you two examples. So number one, Malaysia has recently signed and ratified the CPTPP, which is the new iteration of the former TPPA. And so some of the major chapters in the CPTPP documents actually include standards that need to be met by the Malaysian government on environment number one, which we've been talking a lot about, number two, labor. So it requires us to sign or amend our laws in order to comply with the international ILO standards. For example, number three in the area of government procurement. So Malaysia also has a lot of controversial and sensitive procurement policies that are meant to protect a certain segment of our community, as well as number four, state-owned enterprises. So state-owned enterprises or government-linked companies, they loom large in not just Malaysia, but I think many of our Southeast Asian economies have a large presence of government within the economy. So again, taking a page out of international agreements and seeing how we can use them to reform from within. So I think that's one possible driver. It may not apply to all economies. It really depends on how it is each of the economies want to respond to it, but that's one method. The other thing is to look at, ultimately, international investors. So what kinds of standards are international investors, especially international institutional investors are looking at? If they're coming from countries that they themselves need to comply with, very high standards, they will set the same standards for the investee companies that they're looking at in Southeast Asia. And this is where it is about a business. So it's a little bit of a cynical reason because you can't do business unless you comply with these environments. But this is really how people operate without the laws, without the regulations in place. Nothing is going to compel them to do better. So I think we should take advantage of all of these instruments and tools at hand and do what we can with them, while at the same time, educating our public, educating our young to really transform ourselves and once we get onto this new growth trajectory and what that means, then hopefully it's a sort of holistic environment within which we operate. Thank you. Thank you, Trisha. I might ask Vasuki and Teza, if you have anything else that you'd wanna add or how do you get momentum on these issues? But also, Trisha has brought up the issue of how does climate change affect Southeast Asia's international relations and external relations with other partners. And so we've got things like the carbon border adjustment mechanism in the EU, for example, a lot of talk around carbon finance and financing just transitions and so on. So I put sort of two questions for either of you to sort of talk about in terms of opportunities to drive change, but also this international element. Yeah, I can start and I can talk about the carbon issues as well, but I wanted to start by saying that in answer to your question of where do we start, I think we should start with forgetting efficiency and scale as a mantra for economic development and instead focus on what is providing wellbeing to the environment and to society. And I know this might sound radical, but in the context of planetary boundaries, efficiency and scale has in fact been wasteful and harmful, right? So if we are to focus on what actually delivers what we need as a society, as a planetary society, then we should think beyond efficiency and scale. We should think of what actually delivers wellbeing and the way to do that without being arbitrary, right? Without cherry picking, oh, this industry gets to survive, that industry doesn't get to survive. The way to do that without being arbitrary is two things. Number one is to get the pricing right, to drive in the externality factors and costs into every single price. So we're talking here about maybe carbon pricing and that alludes to your question about carbon border adjustment mechanisms and other types of actually the entire world now is thinking about carbon pricing. The IMF has come up with carbon pricing for suggested carbon prices set at $75 for industrialized countries, $50 per ton for emerging economies and $25 for vulnerable countries with the idea that every single country should have its own carbon pricing system and that will affect international relations, that will affect trade. But if the global community comes together and if ASEAN decides as well as a region how it is best positioned to set its carbon price then ASEAN would be in a good position to negotiate with other countries because that's coming. That discussion is coming sooner or later and we need to be prepared for that. The second thing is, I'm alluding to ESG that Tricia mentioned and all of the innovations around the financial sector. ESG being one of those innovations but right now I think that ESG is being treated as an add-on by investors and bankers as a portfolio that exists outside of its overall portfolio. If you're interested in green stuff this is where you would invest, we have a portfolio for that but it doesn't really address the core or fundamental architecture of the financial sector. And I think in order to address that we need to factor in climate risks and because climate risks are now quantifiable. If we're getting floods five times a year and Europe is getting forest fires twice a year then that is a very physical quantifiable climate risk. And if there are certain industries that are contributing to those climate risks then they shouldn't get a great credit rating. And if we integrate climate risk into financial sector assessments all of these industries would not get triple A ratings and we would not be able to get financing for those companies at such a low rate. And that is what I think we start there correct carbon pricing, integrate climate risks. I think we can transform the system from inside. Thank you, Teza. Vasuki, can I give you a chance to say something on this question, the getting momentum going and the international sort of elements? Yeah, I spend a lot of time at the IMF so I'm about to say that global rules set by multilateral organizations have a role. But I think ultimately at the end of the day when it comes to climate I think the best policies originate at home. The best policies built on domestic political support in a government's ability to rally its population that this is a significant risk for the country. And so therefore there needs to be resolute policy steps taken. Now the private sector certainly in the international banks, institutional investors in the kind of capital flows that they deploy in Southeast Asia will require the investing companies to comply with ESG standards. And I think on the private sector space I'm a little bit more optimistic that standards overall standards are going to be lifted worldwide including in Southeast Asia. But I think when you look at the entire multilateral space for climate negotiations, that is a mess. This entire debate on climate space on providing developing countries with a little bit more time in decarbonizing. But we've seen in this Russia-Ukraine context that Europe is likely to delay its own decarbonization plan which had originally set an intermediate target for 2030 mainly because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. So I would say the best policies start at home. And if you look back 40, 50 years if the debate in Southeast Asia in the late 1960s was what would be your new development model. I think Southeast Asian countries pretty much figured out on their own that it was going to be exports and investment. So I would really focus a lot of attention in domestic political resilience in getting this done. Thanks for that, Vasuki. I think we could actually keep going with this line of topics for quite a long time. But I wanna go back to what Vasuki, you put on the table in your opening remarks about globalization and this having been the engine for Southeast Asia's economies over the previous decades and then now the question marks over the future of that and that's driven of course in part by geopolitics between the United States and China in part around some of the concerns around resilience that have been revealed by COVID-19 as well as by Ukraine and indeed concerns related to the climate impacts as well associated with the industrialization based model. But focusing on what's the ability of Southeast Asian economies really to continue to benefit from globalization and use that as a driver of future economic development. I mean, right now they're trying to navigate between the United States and China trying to maintain access between the two. Is that a viable strategy? What's its limits? Vasuki, maybe I could put that to you and then go to the others. Yeah, if you look at what the geopolitical experts are saying, what they're essentially saying is this is gonna be a protracted long-term battle for regional and global supremacy between the US and China. Steps taken by the US over the last few years, particularly with active participation from many Southeast Asian countries. I mean, the Indo-Pacific economic framework, I think it's a classic example where the US and its allies are trying to build this parallel set of standards on, for example, on digital. And essentially conditioning all of this that there will be money available for climate infrastructure development. But decoupling really is a reality at the moment. I think for the near-term Southeast Asia is going to benefit from the fact that a lot of multinational companies are looking at Vietnam and other countries to move away from China, which has been the final assembly point for regional supply chains for the last three decades. But the decoupling process is going to take a little bit of time. So, you know, this is the space, this is the time I think for Southeast Asia to reflect on, there could be near-term benefits from manufacturing coming into the region, but the way the geopolitical terms are being set, it is increasingly likely that we're going to be in this parallel world of a Sinosphere, a China-dominated economic space and a US-dominated economic space. That may imply lower economic growth, that may imply, you know, less investment flows. We don't know the answer to that. You know, Southeast Asia may well realize that aligning with IPF may generate windfall investment flows, right? So that needs to be established a little bit more work needs to be done on that. So this is the time really to look out for domestic violence because, you know, this geopolitical reality is going to be there for the next few decades. This is the time for the Southeast Asia to shift against. Thank you, Suki. I might go to Tricia next. If you have any thoughts on this question, response to Vasuki and his comments, but also in particular this one of Vasuki, your key points is to focus more on domestic demand as a driver of the region's economies in the future. Tricia, what are your thoughts on all of these points? Yeah, so thank you. I think I respond first to that point about how, yes, while multilateral standards are important, I mean, ultimately it is about domestic political reforms. I would love to agree with that. And I do think that that would be ideal. So that would be the highest standard. However, there are exceptions where there is, you know, no potential opportunity for such domestic political reform. And then what do we do then? We can't just wait. So I think they have to happen simultaneously. So, you know, in Malaysia, for example, domestic political reform is still at large. One would say, in fact, we're having our election soon and the last few years have seen the country going through a particularly unusual and unprecedented period of political instability. So to expect the reforms to come from within at this point in time is actually quite unrealistic. But moving over to the question of geopolitics and US and China, you know, even before the most recent trends of the tech decoupling, I think there were already a lot of questions about how Southeast Asia is benefiting from the US-China trade war. So you're talking about research and analysis that would have been done about three to four years ago. And I do remember reading a paper by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies saying that selected economies in Southeast Asia have benefited from the US-China trade war, but not all. So, you know, countries' economies like Vietnam have benefited, but not actually economies like Malaysia, which we would expect to have been able to take advantage of that trade war, unfortunately, at that point in time it did not yet happen. But I do agree that we are actually well-placed. So all Southeast Asian economies are well-placed to be able to take advantage of this decoupling. However, the ongoing, and I predict, increasing tensions between both US and China will actually also, number one, provide challenges to our economies. I think our economies are actually quite well integrated already, a country like Malaysia. We are a small open trading nation. We have strong trading relationships with both US and China. But on the other hand, countries like ours have also historically been very open to dialogue and communication with both. A country like Malaysia has never really stuck its neck out to favor one side over the other. So it will be interesting to see how it is that it maintains both the relationships with both of these superpowers in the future. So just a last word on the IPF. I think that's certainly an interesting development. I think some parts of the IPF are going to have some regulatory standards to be met and some others not. But if you look at, again, I go back to the CPTPP, it's also interesting that China has put its bid forward to want to sign and rectify the agreement that originated in the US in the first place. So China has also taken advantage of this agreement that has already many economies, 10 and more joining it. So just pitting these two really large multilateral agreements with each other, and it will be interesting to see where this takes all of the other economies in the future. Just a final word about digitalization. I think one of the questions was whether we see digitalization as an opportunity or a threat moving forward, I think it certainly can and it should be seen as an opportunity just given the fact that COVID-19 has seen digital trade soar in ways that never before happened. And Southeast Asian economies really, again, we are well placed to take advantage of this digital lead. However, we do need to be very cognizant of issues like number one, data privacy, number two, the digital divide, which evidently happens in economies which are still very much developing. During the pandemic, there was a big news item in Malaysia where a young girl had to climb up a tree in order to access Wi-Fi to get to her school. So these stories are very relevant in our economies. And I think that's just, while we are thinking about the digital wave, we need to think about the realities on the ground as well. Thank you. Thank you, Trisha. And finally, let's come to Teaser. How do you see these issues around US-China geopolitics and de-globalization, disruption to supply chains? How do you see that affecting where you think the Southeast Asian nations need to go? I think globalization or now the trend towards de-globalization is affected and impacted by politics more than economic factors. And I would always want to ask back, take a step back and ask again to ourselves, what do we want out of globalization? Because the beginning at the outset is that we want globalization to deliver decentralized welfare and resources, essentially, right? We want resources to be spread out more evenly across the globe. But because of the way that they've been negotiated and various political factors in play, instead production is centralized. It's not a centralized at the source of the natural capital necessarily, nor at the source of the innovation or not at the source of the local wisdom. Besuki alluded to local solutions being the best solution. There are lots of local wisdom solutions for climate change, not necessarily they get to become on top of the economic global supply chain, but instead production is centralized at the source of capital, the wealth owners. And this results in many trade practices that exacerbate environmental health and local resilience. And all this is nothing new. I mean, there's a wealth of research and anecdotes and debates about this since JTT. But we need to always remember that if an ecosystem is designed to produce fish for one million people and is forced to produce for one billion people across the globe, there will be problems. So I think if we hark back to the ecosystem limits, then we need to rethink how globalization is managed. And so I would just like to add because there was a point about digitalization. And I think that is a promising update to globalization because knowledge is a resource with unlimited tradability and mobility. Knowledge to produce things and knowledge to innovate and knowledge to create things are now being spread and disseminated at a much faster rate and reaching more and more people, even in isolated places. I mean, if you spend enough time on YouTube, like I do, there is a wealth of practical business-making skills from, I don't know, embroidery to making robots. So I mean, I think commodity trade can be less of a focus in the future of globalization. There's less need for centralized production systems if the knowledge to produce is spread out, decentralized and democratized. And people will get creative with limited resources. Innovation will explode, I think. Thank you, Tees. I mean, certainly digital growth and consumption of digital services, hopefully poses less of a burden on the environment. So we can all just do more of that and spend more time online. I'm not sure how good it is for our mental health, but unless you're watching Lowy Institute panel discussions, at least it'll be better for the environment perhaps. We are starting to run out of allocated time, but I do want to ask one quick, maybe lightning round style question. We started this conversation by noting that, of course, all the nations within Southeast Asia are very different. There are questions about what is the model, what is the commonality and so on. Another related question then is, is what is the role of ASEAN? And I'm perhaps less interested in the organization itself of ASEAN, but rather what is the relationship between Southeast Asian nations as a group, as a bloc, and what could be done with this, where is this headed? So I'd like to put it to each of you as your final sort of comments. Where would you hope that the region can go in the future as a group in order to deliver the changes that you think it requires? Maybe if we can start with you, Vasuki. I would say three areas since it's a lightning round. Let me boil this down to, ASEAN should be more from financial integration. This has been an objective for many, many years, but it's actually not delivered tangible economic benefits in integrating financial systems of the region, certainly on climate finance and on climate resilience. I mean, the ASEAN economic community is a wonderful objective, but we're seeing very little evidence of how that is going to work in terms of climate change. The funny point is on digitalization, where I think there's a profound tension between command and control, between many countries in Southeast Asia thinking that the China, the great firewall model of digital control and surveillance is the best way, where it's actually a more decentralized model and the ability to deliver e-governance actually is going to benefit not only citizens, but overall is going to improve the efficiency of these economies. So if ASEAN is able to knock its heads together on these three areas as priorities, I think we're going to go a long way on this rebalancing issue for the next decade. Thank you, Rasuki. Trisha, maybe we go to you next. All right, thank you. So we actually do this annual report on ASEAN integration every year, looking at how well the Southeast Asian economies are being integrated as envisioned in the original ASEAN economic community documents and visioning integration by 2025. So in short, we're not very well integrated yet, as Rasuki pointed out. So I think just taking a leaf from him, I think I also will focus on these three areas. So I would like to see greater integration, not at ASEAN level, don't have it necessarily dictated by the bureaucracy of ASEAN secretariat, but as Southeast Asian dynamic economies as we are. Number one, again, going back to economics and trade. We already trade a lot with each other, but I think with digital trade coming in, there are a lot of opportunities there for the region. If the region can get its act together in, for example, harmonizing its digital standards, I think that's really great opportunity for us to pitch as a region to other regions and other businesses from abroad. So that's one. Number two, I think going back to again, like standards of human rights. So ASEAN has a sort of human rights declaration, but I think linking it to business and human rights, if we also have some kind of standards that would really help each of our economies to progress better, to be more visible internationally, maybe even compliance with other standards like the EU and so on. And this also again goes back to the first point in increasing trade and digital trade. And finally, I think people-to-people integration. This is less talked about. There's a report that we've also done on migration within the region. Why not think outside the box and think about not having passports within the region? Is that something that we can ever envision to happen? Because that would actually really help in terms of business travel and ensuring that there's some kind of harmonization and community that's created in a more organic manner. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Trisha. And finally, Teza for the final word. I think the three areas where Southeast Asia could do a lot of transformative work on is number one, rethinking the primary indicator for growth, the primary goal for growth. I mean, there's a lot of countries, a few, not a lot. A few countries now toying with the idea that GDP should not be the main indicator for growth. New Zealanders, Bhutan, I think that could be an interesting discussion to be held at the Southeast Asian level where we could then start talking about better indicators like climate resilience, like well-being and equality. And then number two, Southeast Asia could also, needs to also, it's already being discussed, carbon pricing has already been being discussed, but it needs to be in a more coordinated fashion and with a regional view instead of, I think, the current more domestic view of carbon pricing, placing itself as a future giant region for carbon pricing equal to the European region, equal to the East Asian region, just start thinking more regionally on that perspective. And number three is harking back to my earlier point on climate risk integration and what Trisha said on standards, financial standards, that's an important discussion to be had. It's not just about what Southeast Asia can do as a green finance hub or as a destination for green investment, but also how Southeast Asia can position itself in the negotiations and discussions on the global financial architecture and what could be done to transform the global financial architecture to include climate risk to provide more benefits for emerging economies and vulnerable communities in Southeast Asia. Thank you, Tisa. And I think we're coming to the end of our allocated time. So thank you to all three of you for what's been a really fascinating discussion. I found it even more interesting, I think, than even all the written contributions that we've had so far. So thanks to all three of you for today. Thanks to our audience as well for joining us for this discussion of Southeast Asia's future prospects. If you haven't already, please check out the online debate series where you can find the articles by our panelists as well as several other leading thinkers from the region. And a special thanks, of course, again, to our panelists, Vasuki Trisha and Tisa.