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Climate change could 'seriously hinder SEAsia development'
Manila (AFP) April 27, 2009 Climate change could "seriously hinder" Southeast Asia's development and efforts to reduce poverty, a new study released by the Asian Development Bank said Monday. With its long coastlines and heavy dependence on agriculture and forestry, Southeast Asia is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) report said, warning: "The worst is yet to come." "Combating climate change requires urgent action on both adaptation and mitigation -- there is no time to delay," the study said. If the world continues with its "business-as-usual" approach, the average cost of climate change for Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam could be "equivalent to losing 6.7 percent of combined gross domestic product each year by 2100 -- more than twice the global average." Already, climate change has led to extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and tropical cyclones in recent decades in the region, the ADB said. It noted also that the annual mean temperature in the region's four biggest countries was projected to rise by 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100 from the 1990 level. It said that during this period, the sea level in the region was expected to rise 70 centimetres (2.3 feet), while increasingly drier weather is likely in the next two to three decades. "Southeast Asia is likely to suffer more from climate change than the global average," it said. The report said the global financial crisis was pushing other issues down the agenda in many countries, but warned that climate change would still have wide-ranging effects for the region. "The impact of climate change on Southeast Asia is more than on its economy, (it is) also on its politics," Emil Salim, the ADB's lead economist and Indonesia's former environment minister, told a news conference in Bangkok to mark the launch of the report. "To cope with climate change, you must combine it with (the issues of) unemployment, poverty, land-use change and resource problems to make people better understand the importance," Salim added. burs-uan/dk/hg Share This Article With Planet Earth
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