ADB: CLIMATE CHANGE DISASTROUS FOR ASIA
Business-as-usual attitude will undo many advancements in last decades, warns lender
ABUSINESS-as-usual approach to climate change will be “disastrous” for Asia, undoing much of the phenomenal economic growth that has helped it make vast inroads against poverty, said the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a report released yesterday.
A continued reliance on fossil fuels would see the world’s most populous region face prolonged heat waves, rising sea levels, and changing rainfall patterns that would disrupt the ecosystem, damage livelihoods and possibly even cause wars, it said.
“Unabated climate change threatens to undo many of the development advancements of the last decades, not least by incurring high economic losses,” said the report.
“A business-as-usual scenario will lead to disastrous climate impacts for the people of Asia and the Pacific, especially for poor and vulnerable populations.”
But it said the region could avert disaster by shifting to renewable energy sources.
The 2015 Paris climate accord commits nations to keep global temperatures well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.
While a two degrees Celsius rise will be difficult to manage, “one can assume that a four degrees Celsius increase would lead to humanitarian disasters in many nations and result in unmanageable migration flows or locked-in populations”, said the report.
Asia as a whole would see sea levels rise by 1.4m within this century, nearly twice the projected increase under the Paris deal, and face more destructive cyclones, it said.
In this scenario, the report said the region’s coral reef systems would collapse from mass bleaching, with severe consequences for fisheries and tourism.
Melting Asian glaciers would cause both floods and water shortages, disrupting agriculture, and increase dependence on rainfall to meet water needs.
The impact of such changes on access to energy and natural resources were all potential powderkegs for conflict, it said.
Asia’s global economic links mean that extreme climate events could disrupt supply chains not only in the region but also in the rest of the world, it warned.
Despite stunning economic growth that saw Asian per capita incomes rise 10-fold in the past 25 years, it remained home to the majority of the world’s poor, said the ADB.
This, along with the fact that a large share of its population inhabit low-lying coastlines, has made the world’s largest continent “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.
Myanmar, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Thailand were among the world’s top 10 countries most affected by extreme weather events, it said.