Climate Change and Asia

The unilinear Euro-centric narrative of Climate Change and its effects often misses the impact Global Warming will have on Asia, as the continent will be the hardest hit according to experts.

A picture of a few teenagers in Cologne, France has been doing the rounds of the internet recently because of their audacious form of protest against climate change. However, it is not the audacity of the protest that stands out but the depiction of the simple, horrifying truth by three teenagers standing on melting blocks of ice with a noose hanging around their neck. As the ice keeps melting, the noose keeps tightening around their necks, ultimately resulting in death. Not just for them, but for all of humanity immediate, large scale efforts have to be undertaken to correct the situation although many scientists claim that it is already “too late” to do anything.

The discourse around Climate Change and Global Warming, however, is largely Eurocentric. The “Global North” as they are referred to in geo-politics and their actions in trying to battle climate change has been the focus of most narratives and the trajectory they have followed is well documented with the emergence of Green Parties in theUnited Kingdom, Norway or the New Green Deal in USA. However, the narrative almost always excludes the most populated continent of Asia which is at most risk due to various factors.

Part of Asia’s particular vulnerability to the effects of rising global temperatures stems from its geography. Many of its cities like Shanghai, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta— are in low-lying coastal areas, susceptible to rising sea levels and storms sweeping in from the oceans. The numbers of incidents, recent as well as in the past, of natural disasters caused by climate change prove the susceptibility of these disaster-prone areas and their incapability to cope with them.

Super-typhoon Mangkhut left a trail of destruction in the Philippines, Hong Kong and southern mainland China in September. Earlier in the year, Japan and parts of China were hit by some of the worst weather in decades. The monsoon floods that inundated Kerala, in southern India, were the worst in a century. The fact that south India is now facing a severe crisis of drinking water and groundwater, especially in the state of Tamil Nadu shows how drastic and destructive the effect can be on Asia.

Rapid urbanization and industrialization in many parts of Asia are contributing to this vulnerability. As Asian cities expand and global temperatures rise there will be a higher risk of weather-related disasters. Asia is also home to three of the world’s top five polluters: China, India, and Japan. The transition towards non-emitting sources of energy has been uneven, with India becoming global champions of renewables while Japan has not addressed its emission problems.

If the loss of lives and threat of destruction does not ensure that the governments of these countries take a firm stand on climate change, the staggering effects that it has on the global, as well as domestic economy, will certainly make them take note of it. Climate change impacts stand to slash up to 9% off theSouth Asian economy every year, by the end of this century, and the human and financial toll could be even higher if the damage from floods, droughts and other extreme weather events is included. The figures are contained in a report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) entitled ‘Assessing the Costs of Climate Change and Adaptation in South Asia’. The report predicts that by 2050, the collective economy of six countries—Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and SriLanka will lose an average 1.8% of its annual gross domestic product, rising to8.8% by 2100. The economic costs of mitigating natural disasters have also increased. From 2007to 2016, average damages from disasters triggered by natural hazards in the Asia-Pacific region were an estimated $76bn a year. That’s more than twice the cost in the decade before that, according to a report by the UN Economic and social commission for Asia and the Pacific, the ADB and UNDP.

The impact and cost of climate change in South Asia would also depend largely on how the global community tackles the issue, according to the report. If countries around the world act together to keep the rise in global temperatures below an average 2°C, then South Asia’s economy would only be reduced by 1.3% annually by 2050 and 2.5% by 2100, and the cost of protecting itself from the worst of the impacts would be nearly halved.

The significance of governance in these at-risk countries of Asia then rises as their macro-level policies made at national and international levels becomes important. A preemptive stance was taken by most governments currently involves their evolution into an adaptive form of governments as compared to their usual mitigating form. Here, the institutional arrangements slowly adapt themselves to the needs and desires of the community in a changing environment. Community engagement also plays an important role in the implementation of these policies. For instance, the Department of Science and Technology in India (DST) will be commissioning a study to assess the climate risks faced by the states in India, particularly the Himalayan states.

One of the major decisions taken at the international level was the 2015 ParisClimate Agreement that included a provision for developed countries to provide financial support for emerging states to transition from fossil fuels to renewable, starting at US$100 billion a year from 2020. This measure could be seen as corrective and reparative on the part of the Global North that has reaped the most benefits out of expansive industrialization – accelerating climate change in the process.

This plan of action shows some promise considering the fact that environmental scientists and researchers, as well as governments, NGOs and UN regulatory bodies will and more importantly, should now turn to Asia and help the governments to tackle the very real, tangible and impending effects of ClimateChange and Global Warming.

Sukanya Bhattacharya

Intern, AGA