Organizer:  Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University

Type/Location: Hybrid/New Haven, Connecticut

Description:

ESG, sustainability, and climate concerns have swept into headlines and the realm of regulators. But for over twenty years, Indonesia and Malaysia supply chains have been under the eye of big NGOs and reputation-wary global brand name companies like  Unilever and Procter & Gamble, supplying snack foods and soaps in grocery aisles. The big El Nino-driven dry spell of 1997/98 coincided with the Asian Financial Crisis and the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, for the start of a recurrent wildfire-on-peat-haze annual phenomenon (increasingly seen elsewhere in the world). Environmental, labor, and human rights questions have been met by rising domestic skepticism about trade protectionism, just when the region’s record of containing deforestation and its “green premiums” or profits from stricter (Western) criteria exports have never been better. 

Drawing on fifteen years of observations while embedded with value chains, Yu-Leng Khor will share her analysis of key drivers and context that informs my forecasting for selected sustainable products from Southeast Asia: the ubiquitous palm oil (claimed to be in half of many supermarket products), natural rubber (used in gloves and tires), and solar panels. Beyond traditional supply-and-demand factors, she will examine how oligopolies, oligarchies, and opinions impact the outlook. The EU has a regulatory push for smallholder-farmer inclusive supplies that are free of deforestation. How are Southeast Asians responding? What do Indonesian tycoons and Thailand’s smallholders have in common? How does market share relate to market reputation? What about US-China trade war issues? 

Speaker:

Yu-Leng Khor, Senior Economist at Segi Enam Advisors, Associate Director (Sustainability) of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs

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