Yoichi Mine - Böcker

By 2100, more than 80 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in Afrasia (Africa and Asia). This book draws lessons from history, provides a new cognitive map of the world, and discusses multiple challenges global citizens will face in the age of Afrasia, an emerging macro-region.The centre of gravity of the world is shifting. Whether the world can manage a soft landing into sustainable equilibrium depends on the nature of the dialogue people in Africa and Asia will organise. The author argues that a state of equilibrium between the two is achievable, provided issues related to gender, employment, agriculture, human–nature relationships, and multicultural coexistence are simultaneously addressed. Can future Afrasia present itself as a community determined not to allow the return of predatory practice internally and externally? Will the fates of African and Asian peoples converge or diverge? How about the future relationships between Afrasia and the rest of the world?Exploring these questions using multiple disciplines, this book will be of interest to professional researchers and graduate students in IR and Afro-Asian relations, as well as Asian and African area studies, demography, geography, history, development economics, anthropology, language education, and religious studies.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

By 2100, more than 80 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in Afrasia (Africa and Asia). This book draws lessons from history, provides a new cognitive map of the world, and discusses multiple challenges global citizens will face in the age of Afrasia, an emerging macro-region.The centre of gravity of the world is shifting. Whether the world can manage a soft landing into sustainable equilibrium depends on the nature of the dialogue people in Africa and Asia will organise. The author argues that a state of equilibrium between the two is achievable, provided issues related to gender, employment, agriculture, human–nature relationships, and multicultural coexistence are simultaneously addressed. Can future Afrasia present itself as a community determined not to allow the return of predatory practice internally and externally? Will the fates of African and Asian peoples converge or diverge? How about the future relationships between Afrasia and the rest of the world?Exploring these questions using multiple disciplines, this book will be of interest to professional researchers and graduate students in IR and Afro-Asian relations, as well as Asian and African area studies, demography, geography, history, development economics, anthropology, language education, and religious studies.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this edited volume revisits the framework of human security and development. It examines the protection-empowerment nexus as applied to various vulnerable groups and populations affected by the pandemic.While the conventional human security literature has focused on top-down protection, this book offers new perspectives on human security by exploring bottom-up empowerment from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It also encourages readers to rethink the agency of vulnerable people in addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic. Through eight case studies from Southeast Asia and Japan, the contributors to this book demonstrate the importance of empowerment in achieving human security. They focus on the responses of vulnerable groups and communities to multiple threats to their lives, livelihoods, and dignity. The chapters discuss key human security concerns, such as poverty, the environment, food, forced migration, gender, health, aging, peace, and justice – all of which have been compounded and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.An essential resource for students and scholars of human security in the aftermath of COVID-19 and its wider impacts.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Funded by JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this edited volume revisits the framework of human security and development. It examines the protection-empowerment nexus as applied to various vulnerable groups and populations affected by the pandemic.While the conventional human security literature has focused on top-down protection, this book offers new perspectives on human security by exploring bottom-up empowerment from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It also encourages readers to rethink the agency of vulnerable people in addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic. Through eight case studies from Southeast Asia and Japan, the contributors to this book demonstrate the importance of empowerment in achieving human security. They focus on the responses of vulnerable groups and communities to multiple threats to their lives, livelihoods, and dignity. The chapters discuss key human security concerns, such as poverty, the environment, food, forced migration, gender, health, aging, peace, and justice – all of which have been compounded and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.An essential resource for students and scholars of human security in the aftermath of COVID-19 and its wider impacts.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Funded by JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development.

This book – through a collection of case studies covering Southern and East Africa, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia – offers insights into the nature of social exchanges between Africa and Asia.

This book – through a collection of case studies covering Southern and East Africa, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia – offers insights into the nature of social exchanges between Africa and Asia.

This book takes up a wide variety of human security challenges beyond the dimension of human conflict, and looks at both natural and human disasters that the East Asian region faces or is attempting to resolve.

This book takes up a wide variety of human security challenges beyond the dimension of human conflict, and looks at both natural and human disasters that the East Asian region faces or is attempting to resolve.

This book reveals how the idea of human security, combined with other human-centric norms, has been embraced, criticized, modified and diffused in East Asia (ASEAN Plus Three).

This Open Access book provides a comprehensive historical overview of Japan’s development cooperation based on oral evidence. Some of the projects this book portrays date back to the 1960s. The book draws extensively on the lively and spirited narratives provided by 288 people, mostly project counterparts in developing countries, whom the author interviewed between 2018 and 2024. The research covers six Asian, four African, and three Latin American countries, with the sectors of projects ranging from agriculture and fisheries to manufacturing, infrastructure, education, health, and human security. The stories told by the witnesses are full of passion, retrospection, and careful judgment, combined with factual information provided in JICA’s expert reports. Each project has evolved in a self-contained way with its own logic, but when they are all combined in a single book, a holistic picture of Japan’s development cooperation emerges.Historically, one of the basic principles of Japan’s ODA has been to support the self-help efforts of developing countries. In this book, storytelling on the donor side is relegated to the background, and the voices of people in developing countries are amplified instead. Drawing on the principal-agent theory, the book creates an original space for stakeholders in developing countries, especially the local professionals who have played a key role in their nation-building efforts, such as teachers, medical doctors, engineers, agricultural extension workers, municipal officers, etc. These professionals are called “counterparts” of Japanese experts and have been the direct targets of hands-on technology transfer. In addition, the book carefully explains how these projects have overcome political and environmental crises as well as critical circumstances related to organizational sustainability. Readers are expected to learn a great deal from the project histories presented in this book.Japan began its ODA in 1954, a decade before it joined the OECD in 1964, and became a top donor country in the 1990s. To date, many countries Japan has assisted have achieved remarkable growth and joined the ranks of emerging donors. The history of Japan as the first nation in the world that has crossed the border from the South to the North, as well as its experience of rapid recovery from its defeat in World War II, is embedded in the modality of its development cooperation. The experience of Japan’s development cooperation, as evidenced in this book, will provide eye-opening lessons for countries in the Global South as well as those in the donor camp.The book is a translation of the original Japanese version, which was published in March 2023 as the sixth in the seven-volume series of the outcomes of a research project, “Japan’s Development Cooperation: A Historical Perspective,” designed and implemented by the JICA Ogata Sadako Research Institute for Peace and Development.  In this era when development cooperation undergoes drastic transformation, it is crucial for us to learn from past experience to inform future strategies. Japan’s approach has focused on teaching people how to fish rather than giving them fish, thereby fostering unbreakable bonds of trust with local people. This book vividly depicts how these trusting relationships enabled development projects to overcome unforeseen challenges and crises. By sharing narratives of those involved, the book also reveals their expectation, frustration, and a shared sense of accomplishment. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the future direction of global efforts in development cooperation.Tanaka Akihiko, President, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

This book classifies and assesses the real and perceived risks associated with both the Covid-19 pandemic and government responses to it in seven African countries — DR Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe — based on large scale quantitative and qualitative surveys conducted in 2022–2024. It also elucidates the people’s resilience in overcoming the risks within their political, social, and cultural context.Although research on COVID-19 has been conducted in various fields, particularly in the medical field, the analytical perspective of this book is unique. COVID-19 prevention policies are considered to have seriously increased other risks, such as hunger, other infectious diseases, interruption of education, and various types of human rights violations, including increased conflict, violence against civilians, and political abuse. Therefore, this book argues that COVID-19 prevention policies, as well as the pandemic itself, should be regarded as the downside risk that triggers the deterioration of the other potential risks to vulnerable people.Depicted here is the account of how trust in government, community, and family, within the existing political, social, and cultural environment, created pandemic politics, as elections during the pandemic instrumentalized and politicized government prevention measures. Economic distress threatened people's lives more than COVID-19 during lockdowns and severe behavioral restrictions, and the spread of misinformation discouraged people from being vaccinated. This book will be useful to policy makers and practitioners in international society who are preparing for the next pandemic based on the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.