The knowledge of the drivers of food losses in international trade and possible mitigation strategies is still limited. This study focused on the prevalence and drivers of food loss in Indonesian tuna exported to the European Union, the United States, and Japan. The results showed that various existing Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) are in place to ensure food safety. However, standards and regulations differ significantly among trade partners, and are somewhat more strict than international standards, leading to higher rejection levels.

The economic and health recovery of countries in the Asia-Pacific region from the pandemic is hinged on the rapid and equitable deployment of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. However, in the initial years of the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, highly unequal distribution of vaccines occurred across and within countries. Even though the tight global supply was indeed an issue, health system challenges, particularly in terms of financing, service delivery, human resources, regulatory capacity and governance, played an important role in the inequitable deployment of vaccines.

Vaccines against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have provided hope for containing the pandemic, but there are challenging obstacles to international transport and logistics of the new vaccines and vaccine inputs needed for manufacturing. This study identifies key barriers in the Asia-Pacific region to the timely and effective transport of vaccines from the countries where they are manufactured to the countries where they are needed.

The global health crisis that came to be known as the COVID-19 pandemic and started to sweep across the world in early 2020 revealed many vulnerabilities in the economic, social, and political fabric underpinning what much of the world had come to accept as normal. In ways that we are still grappling to understand, the pandemic and the many disruptions it brought about have ushered in significant changes to the way we work, consume, spend our leisure time, and even our relationships to government.

The COVID-19 pandemic re-emphasized the role of vaccines in prevention and control of outbreaks and infectious diseases, but not all countries are able to produce them. Limited domestic capacities combined with other bottlenecks have often resulted in vaccine stockouts in many countries. In this context, international trade could be instrumental in overcoming challenges pertaining to vaccine availability. This study is an analysis of trade and trade barriers related to vaccines and vaccine inputs in the Asia-Pacific region, the second largest regional trader of vaccine inputs.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the crucial role of vaccines in public health management and economic recovery. Its worldwide impact has raised national security concerns and implications on health policies, particularly on Asia Pacific countries’ readiness to cope with the next pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of national, regional, and global vaccine research and development (R&D) systems. Translating public and private R&D efforts into effective vaccines in a timely manner requires not only sufficient financial and scientific resources but also a policy-driven R&D ecosystem that fosters innovation, public-private partnerships, and international cooperation.

Food loss remains one of the central points of collective action around the world, as reflected in the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, but this issue is far more concerning for the developing countries. Several studies highlight the level and stages of food losses. However, there is limited work on understanding the food losses in the context of international trade.

In Asia-Pacific, over the last few decades, countries have focussed on improving their healthcare sector and have been trying to achieve the targets set by SDG 3 – Ensure Healthy Lives and Promote Wellbeing for All at All Ages, and SDG 17 – Partnership for the Goals. Yet there are still considerable gaps across the countries, in terms of access to healthcare services and per capita healthcare expenditure.

In this paper, we review the sustainable development content of regional trade agreements (RTAs) globally using a new ESCAP RTA Text Analysis tool, followed by a comparative analysis of sustainable development related provisions in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and two other recent “mega” regional trade agreements (RTAs), namely the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the European Union – Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EU – Japan EPA).