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ASEAN resilience: A pillar for open and inclusive multilateralism
ASEAN resilience needs to bridge the ASEAN pillar and sector-centric silos, which may otherwise deter from a coherent and strategic vision that spans the regional community.
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Unity podium: ASEAN leaders wave on stage during the opening ceremony of the 40th and 41st summits of the regional grouping in Phnom Penh on Nov. 11, 2022. (AFP/Tang Chhin Sothy)
O
ur present is a time of Permacrisis, an extended period of instability and insecurity, to cite Collins Dictionary’s 2022 word of the year.
From COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine to climate-related disasters, crises now travel faster, farther and more frequently than before. A part of our new normal, crises can no longer be dismissed as exceptions or outliers.
What, then, can we do in a time of a Permacrisis? Where do we go from here?
Resilience, or the ability to bounce back from shocks and stressors, offers one possible answer. If crisis is the new normal, then it makes less sense to rely on old methods of risk prediction and elimination. Instead of arising from “known knowns,” crises increasingly arise from “unknown unknowns,” risks that we are not even aware of and thus cannot predict.
In such contexts, resilience focuses on bolstering our capacity (as individuals, societies and ecosystems) to bounce back from crises and strengthen future recovery.
Given that these crises and complex risks proliferate in transnational contexts, it is here that ASEAN and resilience come to meet. Increasingly, the problems that we face cannot be solved through compartmentalized national actions alone. Risks will otherwise simply migrate, only to return in more virulent forms, like COVID-19 variants thriving from vaccine hoarding and unequal supplies worldwide.
In short, transnational risks require transnational responses. Here, ASEAN stands as a key pillar for coordinating regional resilience in support of both national and global resilience. Unsurprisingly, resilience has begun to manifest in various sectors of ASEAN policy, from disaster resilience to supply chain resilience and resilient energy and food systems.
