outnumber geophysical disasters by nine to one over the past decade. Among natural disasters, floods are the most reported events in Africa, Asia and Europe, while wind­storms are most frequent in the Americas and Oceania" (IFRCRC, 2004). Among the top 50 countries with major economic loss from natural disasters are 14 countries from ESAP, with Japan ranked second, China third, India sixth and Indonesia eighth (Table 1-2) (Guha-Sapir et al., 2004).
     Frequent disasters make  agriculture and land-based production in ESAP a high-risk venture. The livelihoods of communities dependent on agriculture and natural re­sources  and with limited  diversification are  vulnerable. Landslides across the southern Philippines in December 2003 killed 200 people and left thousands homeless, reig-niting the disaster prevention debate. From 1971 to 2000, natural disasters killed 34,000 Filipinos. From 1990 to 2000, 35 million people were severely affected by natural disasters (IFRCRC, 2004). A windstorm in 2002 led to con­siderable land and crop loss, affecting 100 million people in China (Guha-Sapir et al., 2004). For many countries in South and East Asia floods have become annual, alternat­ing with drought. In the Pacific, cyclones present constant threats to livelihoods. In Thailand, the 2004 tsunami had a devastating effect on the livelihoods of villagers in over 400 fishing and faming communities along the Andaman coast. Many of the communities' livelihood assets were lost (FAO, 2006d). Lost livelihoods and basic productive assets were similar in other countries affected by the tsunami, such as India, Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Since 2004 Indonesia has been affected by many disasters—tsunami, avian influenza, volcanic eruption, haze and floods—that have taxed the capacity of government to manage disaster and tested people's resilience.
     Disasters are further obstacles to overcome in trying to reduce poverty and achieve sustainability. In the region, increasingly emphasis has been placed on early warning sys­tems for disaster, information access for local disaster-prone communities, community approaches in disaster manage­ment and risk reduction, on exploration of strategies to improve agriculture extension, and on local government support for community approaches.

1.2.3.3   Pests and pathogens ESAP agricultural communities, as those in every other re­gion, face risk to productivity from pests and crop and from livestock diseases. The region is recognized for its integrated pest management programs with community participation and farmer field school training methods. Yet in recent days the region has been the focus of global attention because of avian influenza.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza. Since 2004, the highly pathogenic avian influenza epidemic presents a high risk to small-scale farmers in ESAP who practice mixed farming, combining crops and livestock. The emergency officially began in December 2003, when a highly contagious avian influenza struck chickens on a farm near Seoul, Republic of Korea, and spread rapidly across the country. Within weeks, simultaneous outbreaks in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Lao PDR, Thailand and Viet Nam had devastated domestic fowl. The impact has been distributed within the

Table 1 -2. Incidence of natural disasters and reported economic damage: 1974-2003.

Source: Guha-Sapir et al., 2004.

entire poultry market chain, affecting producers, consumers and employees in the retail industry. In some areas, farmers lost more than half their poultry (FAO, 2005a).

1.3      Demographics
People in ESAP are both producers and consumers of AKST. Only a few population indicators with immense and im­mediate implications for AKST were explored: male and female population, aging of population, urban and rural population trend, agriculture labor disaggregated by male and female workers, child labor in agriculture, unpaid work in farming, literacy and education among men and women, migration realties and contributions of migrants to capital.

1.3.1      Regional demographic trends
People are the wealth of East and South Asia and the Pacific. The region encompasses three of the world's most popu­lous countries and developing countries that have a rela­tively large youthful population. China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Japan are among the top ten in popula­tion size (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). From 2000 to 2005, three countries in ESAP were among the six countries in the world that had half the world's estimated 77 million an­nual increase in population. These countries and their rate of increase were India, 21%; China, 12%; and Bangladesh, about 4%. India is expected to overtake China as the most populous country in the world by 2035 (ECOSOC, 2004).
     The population of the Pacific Islands reached about 8.6 million in 2004, an increase of approximately 1.7 mil­lion people over the past ten years. Population distribution remained largely unchanged: the five largest countries and territories that comprise Melanesia had the vast majority, 86.4%, of the regional population, followed by much of the