The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been issuing its Sustainability Report since 2007. The Sustainability Report allows stakeholders to assess ADB's operational and organizational sustainability performance, providing them with a single point of reference to understand ADB's commitment to sustainable development. For 2018, this biennial Sustainability Report highlights the integration of sustainability into ADB's operations and organizational activities during 2016–2017. A separate detailed Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Content Index sets out ADB's management approaches to material topics and responses to general and specific disclosures in the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards. The Sustainability Report and detailed GRI Content Index are prepared in accordance with the core option of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards and are available online at www.adb.org/documents/asian-development-bank-sustainability-report-2018.

The Asian Development Bank Sustainability Report has been produced biennially since 2007. It enables stakeholders to understand and assess ADB’s sustainability performance in its project investments, technical assistance, knowledge services, and corporate footprint. The publication consists of two parts. Part I: Highlights presents the major economic, social, and environmental impacts of ADB’s operations and headquarters for 2018 and 2019. Part II: The Global Reporting Initiative Content Index provides detailed information and data on the integration of sustainability in ADB’s operations, facilities, and organizational activities against the reporting standards of the Global Reporting Initiative.

The implicit topology of international institutional complexes varies greatly across policy areas. In some areas, the lion's share of everyday policy cooperation is shaped by a single institution with alternative and more regional institutions operating in its shadow. In other policy fields, institutional structures appear to be different, seeing a range of non-hierarchical, decentralized, alternative institutions. The Institutional Topology of International Regime Complexes: Mapping Inter-Institutional Structures in Global Governance provides a systematic conceptualization and explanation of the evolution of these varying institutional topologies underlying regime complexes across five issue areas of Global Governance: Intellectual Property Protection, Tax Avoidance, Financial Stability, Development Aid, and Energy Governance. By providing an empirically grounded, network-based conceptualization and mapping of institutional topologies, as well as a theoretical explanation for their variation across policy space and time, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of both the empirical manifestation of inter-institutional structures across various policy fields of Global Governance and the issue specific factors that shape the varying institutional trajectories spurring (de-) centralization. Daßler combines quantitative network analyses with qualitative case studies to trace institutional decentralization processes across five highly relevant issue areas of Global Governance. This volume shows how the nature of issue-specific cooperation problems translates into disparate structures among multilateral institutions occupying the same regime complex. In light of growing concerns about the future trajectories of Global Governance in times of heightened geopolitical tensions, Daßler offers a fresh perspective to comparatively capture the profoundly varying institutional landscapes across different issue areas and their associated challenges and benefits of multilateral cooperation. Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

The annual Asian Development Outlook analyzes economic performance in the past year and offers forecasts for the next 2 years for the 45 economies in Asia and the Pacific that make up developing Asia. Growth prospects in the region are upbeat, buoyed by favorable demand at home and abroad. A strong performance in 2017 reflected a surge in exports, which will likely abate this year and next, and rapidly expanding domestic demand. While the outlook is for steady growth, risks to it are decidedly on the downside: Trade friction could weaken recently deepened trade links, tightening US monetary policy could diminish investment in developing Asia, and rising domestic private debt may hamper growth. New technologies drive higher productivity, the foundation for economic growth, better-paid jobs, and poverty reduction. The latest technologies in robotics and artificial intelligence may threaten some jobs, however, and leave less-skilled workers behind. To maximize gains in productivity while safeguarding social welfare, governments in developing Asia should protect workers but not preserve particular jobs. Meanwhile, they should facilitate the countervailing forces in new technologies that generate new jobs. Dealing with the downsides of new technology requires synchronized effort on skills development, labor regulation, social protection, and income redistribution.

This publication launches the Inclusive Green Growth Index, a new comprehensive metric that captures the key dimensions of economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability. The index's 28 performance indicators cover various aspects of growth and policy outcomes in areas where higher investment will advance better quality of growth and living standards. Designed as an easy-to-use guide for policy makers and stakeholders in development, the Inclusive Green Growth Index builds on current measures and indices. It is a powerful tool for assessing a country’s progress in achieving its development goals.

Growth in developing Asia is holding up against external headwinds. Robust domestic demand supported the region's large economies, and oil prices above expectations boosted prospects for many oil and gas exporters. Consumer prices are picking up with rising global fuel and food prices, but moderate inflation in several Asian economies has kept the regional average in check. Downside risks to the outlook are intensifying. If tightened more than investors expect, US monetary policy could accelerate capital outflow from Asian economies and put further depreciation pressure on regional currencies. Any escalation of the trade conflict could disrupt cross-border production links. Most economies remain robust, but policy makers must be ready to respond. In the years since the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998, sound domestic macroeconomic fundamentals and buoyant external conditions have supported developing Asia's rise to become an engine of the global economy. However, the changing global landscape poses new challenges to the maintenance of macroeconomic stability. This Update explores the key pockets of vulnerability and the policy options available to manage them. To fortify the region against heightened uncertainty, policy makers may need to deploy the full range of policy tools, while forging and safeguarding the sound fundamentals that support economic, social, and political stability.

The annual Asian Development Outlook, now in its 30th year, analyzes economic performance in the past year and forecasts performance in the next 2 years for the 45 economies in Asia and the Pacific that make up developing Asia. Growth prospects in developing Asia remain strong despite persistent external headwinds responsible for moderating expansion since 2017. Global trade and economic activity weakened toward the end of 2018, slowing growth in many economies in the region. The outlook is cloudy with risks that tilt to the downside. A drawn-out trade conflict could undermine trade and investment in the region, and US fiscal policy and the consequences of a disorderly Brexit could weigh on growth in the advanced economies and the People's Republic of China. Though the risk of sharp increases in US interest rates has subsided, policy makers must stay vigilant. Disasters are shaped by natural hazards and the dynamics of the economy, society, and environment in which they occur. They pose a growing threat to development and prosperity in the region, their consequences disproportionately severe in developing countries, especially for the poor and marginalized. As developing Asia is home to more than four-fifths of the people affected by disasters globally in the past 2 decades, the region must strengthen its disaster resilience. This means integrating disaster risk reduction into national development and investment plans, spending more on prevention for a better balance with spending on rescue and recovery, and pooling risk through insurance and reinsurance.