New year, new challenges for Asian leaders

By Eden Estopace | Jan 5, 2012

As Asia welcomed 2012, its leaders expressed optimism and hope for the coming months. In their respective New Year messages, most said the challenges are daunting but new possibilities abound. It's time for a refresh and another round of hard work and commitment to good government.

Here's a look at what the leaders set as national priorities for the year:

Reconstruction and rebirth

The devastation wrought by the March 2011 Japan earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is without precedent in recent history. Statistics from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed that over 15,700 were declared dead, over 4,500 were reported missing and over 5,700 were injured as of August. International assistance from 163 countries, 43 international organizations poured into the country in the succeeding months, including help from rescue teams from 29 countries.

Perhaps no other leader in Asia today is as saddled by the burden of a country's reconstruction and rebirth than Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who assumed his post last September.

"From now, we will dramatically accelerate the reconstruction from the earthquake disaster and the rebirth of Fukushima, with the Reconstruction Agency, which will be newly established, as the command center," he said in his New Year reflection and message.

Four months into his administration, a third supplemental budget has been passed in the Diet, bringing to over 12 trillion yen the funds allotted for reconstruction for fiscal 2011. He also announced that a "state of cold shutdown" was achieved in the reactors at TEPCO's Fukushima plant.

Many observers have noted Japan's resilience in the wake of major disasters and its technical advancement in most aspects of its society that helped avert more accidents and saved more lives.

Noda, in his speech to the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, noted that at the time of the magnitude 9 earthquake, all lines of the Tohoku shinkansen bullet trains, including a train running at 270 kilometers per hour, made emergency stops safely, without causing a single injury. This was made possible by a seismograph response at Oshika Peninsula that detected something at 2:47:03 p.m. on March 11 and automatically stopped the train exactly 1 minute, 10 seconds before biggest tremor hit at 2:48:15 p.m.

This brings to the issue the role that technology plays in disaster and emergency response, which in recent months have been noted by governments and the private sector with great attention. Technical capabilities ranging from instant mapping of disaster areas to bringing instant Internet connectivity to areas that lost power and all forms communication facilities to the speedy construction of mirror sites for major government websites so that they may continuously provide information and services to citizens were seen as important.

Equally indispensable in disaster preparedness as gleaned from the Japanese disaster is the ecosystem that governs the working relationship of government bodies, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the donor community in collaborating and responding quickly to emergency situations.

But perhaps nothing has prepared Asia for the biggest flooding in half a century that devastated Thailand. World Bank estimates the damage from the floods, triggered by a typhoon and heavy rains during the monsoon season started in July and continued until December, reached 1,440 billion baht (US$45 billion) by the end of the year. Data from the Emergency Operation Center for Flood, Storm and Landslide showed that as of November, 3.1 million people were affected. 

Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej was quoted in a Bangkok Post report urging the Thai people in his New Year message to learn from the floods and to "live with consciousness and be mindful and brace for unwanted events in the future." Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, for her part, said she is looking forward to a "year of smiles" after a tough period of high living costs and the flood disaster."