dividend" as the share of the young working population in­creases (except in the developed ESAP countries and others such as Sri Lanka and Thailand), adding to national incomes (ADB, 2005). Their success will depend on the availability of education, employment opportunities, infrastructure and capital investments that provided to employ this young la­bor force.
     Policies that will have the highest impact on full and productive employment in the ESAP region are growth-pro­moting policies (ADB, 2005), primarily:
1.    Policies to improve incomes in the rural economy and urban non-formal sector;
2.    Policies to shift productivity gains into higher real wag­es and aggregate demand; and 3.    Industrial policies that provide government with a ma­jor role in co-coordinating and monitoring industry.

Increasing economic liberalization and reduction in tariff rates projected to begin in 2010 causes concern about the demise of the domestic industry and widespread unemploy­ment in the manufacturing sector in the Asian countries. Given the likely evolution of specialization in industry (as the driver of growth), there will not be any worker displace­ment/redundancy; with specialization, workers will move within industry rather than between or out (Veeramani, 2007). Employment opportunities and incomes are likely to be highly differentiated in rural areas, with globally compet­itive farm entrepreneurs (Rural World 1) standing to gain at the cost of the falling fortunes of family farmers (Rural World 2) and the struggle for survival of the poor peasants and laborers (Rural World 3) (Pimbert et al., 2001). There will be increasing demand for labor/employment policies to ensure that different segments of the rural population can survive the pressures of globalized agricultural and food systems.

4.2.5.2  Education Education, especially access to primary and secondary edu­cation, will continue to enable the increasing migration of rural educated youth to urban or rural non-farm sector employment (IFAD, 2001; ADB, 2005). A decline in fer­tility rates allows increased participation of women in the workforce. China for instance, has gender disparity in edu­cational levels and in opportunities for women in the labor market (Hussain et al., 2006; World Bank, 2007). This is a significant issue for the country since China has the highest female labor force participation in the world.
     Gender and urban biases in education (see IFAD, 2001; ADB, 2005; UNESCO, 2006) will continue to be major problems in achieving the targets set for poverty reduc­tion and better rural livelihoods in the Asia-Pacific region. Though gender gaps in primary education have been re­duced in several countries, there is significant gender bias in secondary and higher education, as well as employment opportunities for women. These gaps are likely to grow in future unless addressed in a focused and perhaps regional manner (IFAD, 2001; Fennel, 2006). Agricultural education investments are likely to decline in formal universities and agricultural universities (Byerlee and Echeverria, 2002). But investments in private and public sector higher education

and research as well as investments in Farmer Field Schools, training programs at various levels of participatory research and extension, and most importantly in functional educa­tion and non-formal education for sustainable development are likely to increase in all the ASEAN, APEC and SAARC countries (UNESCO, 2006). Investment in informal educa­tion in the Asia Pacific region is increasingly seen by donor agencies and governments as a mechanism for (1) enhanc­ing skills and capacities for better livelihoods and incomes, (2) enabling employment opportunities, especially non-farm rural employment, (3) reducing the gender bias and thereby poverty in rural areas and in agriculture, and (4) increasing capacities for technology uptake, especially through func­tional education (IFPRI, 1995; Ooi, 2001; UNESCO, 2006) (Box 4-2).
     It is commonly agreed that formal education to improve literacy and numeracy improve farm productivity since such skills increase the sources from which farmers may obtain information. Higher education may lead to increased rural to urban migration meaning that policies targeting improved farm productivity through education may also instigate hu­man capital outflow to off-farm employment. This shift of skilled labor to other sectors will be increasingly seen as a source of growth opportunities for manufacturing sector growth.
     Several gaps in our knowledge about food systems have to be addressed to ensure democratic and environmentally sustainable food systems in the future (Pimbert et al., 2001). AKST organizations are increasingly acknowledging their need to educate themselves about diverse contexts and their implications for S&T.
     The trend to understand local knowledge systems and their role in shaping or utilizing the outputs of AKST will be strengthened in the ESAP region. Unfortunately demo­cratic participation of the relevant actors/rural poor in shaping formal S&T systems will not be realized in the near future in ESAP countries. Farmer participatory research will continue to be conducted after the technologies have been proven in laboratory and field station trials and farmers will continue to be seen as tail-end adopters of technologies. These methods will continue for at least several more de­cades despite social science research showing the success of different approaches to learning, technology generation and utilization (Fujisaka, 1994; Biggs and Matsaert, 2004; Hall et al., 2004; Biggs, 2006). The basic problem within AKST remains an awareness of little social science outside of agri­cultural economics; there is no inclusion of disciplines such as anthropology, which lead to emphasis on local contexts, and poverty-relevant sciences. This situation may continue well into the 2020s in the ESAP region unless challenged by dynamic developments (Cernea, 1991; Raina, 2005).

4.2.5.3   Indigenous knowledge Basic education helps when farmers want to make the tran­sition from traditional to modern agricultural practices. Yet AKST actors—public sector R&D organizations, private firms and private R&D, NGOs/CSOs, policy makers and donors—have made little attempt to explain these educa­tion-led changes in AKST uptake other than the usual tech­nology adoption studies. Though few attempts have been