Asia Faces Living
Nightmare
From Climate Change
By David Fogarty
26 November, 2004
Planet
Ark
The weather predictions
for Asia in 2050 read like a script from a doomsday movie. Except
many climatologists and green groups fear they will come true unless
there is a concerted global effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.
In the decades to come Asia, home to more than half the world's 6.3
billion people, will lurch from one climate extreme to another, with
impoverished farmers battling droughts, floods, disease, food shortages
and rising sea levels.
"It's not a
pretty picture," said Steve Sawyer, climate policy adviser with
Greenpeace in Amsterdam. Global warming and changes to weather patterns
are already occurring and there is enough excess carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to drive climate change for
decades to come.
Already, changes
are being felt in Asia but worse is likely to come, Sawyer and top climate
bodies say, and could lead to mass migration and widespread humanitarian
crises.
According to predictions,
glaciers will melt faster, some Pacific and Indian Ocean islands will
have to evacuate or build sea defences, storms will become more intense
and insect and water-borne diseases will move into new areas as the
world warms.
All this comes on
top of rising populations and spiralling demand for food, water and
other resources. Experts say environmental degradation such as deforestation
and pollution will likely magnify the impacts of climate change.
In what could be
a foretaste of the future, Japan was hit by a record 10 typhoons and
tropical storms this year, while two-thirds of Bangladesh, parts of
Nepal and large areas of northeastern India were flooded, affecting
50 million people, destroying livelihoods and making tens of thousands
ill.
The year before,
a winter cold snap and a summer heat wave killed more than 2,000 people
in India.
INDIA AT RISK
Sawyer said India,
with a population of just over one billion people, is one of the areas
most threatened by climate change.
"The threat
to the agricultural base for the Indian subcontinent from drought and
increased heat waves, the consequences to the burgeoning Indian economy
and the very large number of people to feed are potentially very very
substantial."
Rising sea levels
will also bring misery to millions in Asia, he said, causing sea water
to inundate fertile rice-growing areas and fresh-water aquifers, making
some areas uninhabitable.
Sawyer said India
and Bangladesh will have to draw up permanent relocation plans for millions
of people. "I'm afraid that's almost inevitable."
By 2050, China will
have built sea defences along part of its low-lying, storm-prone southeastern
coast, while the north of the country faced increasing desertification,
he said.
According to the
UN's World Food Programme, the Gobi Desert in China expanded by 52,400
square kilometres (20,230 sq miles) between 1994 and 1999, creeping
closer to the capital Beijing.
Anwar Ali, a leading
climatologist in Bangladesh, says about 15 percent of the country would
be under water if sea levels rose by a metre in the next century.
Perhaps the biggest
threat to Asia in the future will be the shortage of clean water. The
WFP says Asia accounts for 60 percent of the world's population but
has only 36 percent of the globe's freshwater.
According to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), rapid melting of glaciers
poses a major threat to the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and
parts of China.
Seven major rivers,
including the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra and the Mekong, begin in the
Himalayas and the glacial meltwater during summer months is crucial
to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people downstream.
RICH VERSUS POOR
But many of these
glaciers are melting quickly and will be unable to act as reservoirs
that moderate river flows. This means less water in the dry season and
the chance for more extreme floods during the wet season.
Sawyer thinks rich
countries, by far the biggest polluters, should look after the millions
at risk from climate change or suffer the consequences that could include
mass migration or trying to feed millions made homeless by droughts
and floods in a world struggling to grow enough food.
Fears of mass migration
have already prompted the Pentagon and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service, among others, to study the risk from climate-induced mass migration.
The Pentagon in
its 2003 report looked at what might happen if the climate changed abruptly.
The result was near anarchy.
"As global
and local carrying capacities are reduced, tensions could mount around
the world," it said. This could lead some wealthier nations becoming
virtual fortresses to preserve their resources.
"Less fortunate
nations, especially those with ancient enmities with their neighbours,
may initiate struggles for access to food, clean water, or energy,"
the report said.
Few places are more
exposed to climate change than the low-lying Maldives islands, to the
west of Sri Lanka, where the highest natural point is under 2.5 metres
(eight feet).
"We still face
the threat of sea level rise," Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul
Gayoom said in a recent interview.
"There is encroachment
of the sea on many islands, there is erosion of our beaches," he
said. In response, the Maldives is building an island that is a metre
higher than the capital Male.
Malcolm Duthie,
WFP's country director in Laos, said even small changes in weather patterns,
such as a delay in the monsoon of just a few weeks, is a threat to subsistence
farmers. In Laos, he said rains seemed to have become shorter and sharper,
meaning faster run-off and more erosion.
Such changes are
also threatening millions of farmers in Indonesia, where rapid industrialisation,
slash-and-burn land clearing and illegal logging have caused extreme
weather and pollution across the archipelago, experts say.
"The wet season
is shorter than usual which has led to higher rainfall during that brief
period and sometimes caused landslides and floods," said Indonesian
weather expert Agus Paulus.
Government officials
have said in the past years water levels at a number of reservoirs in
densely populated Java island are close to a critically low level.
As countries try
to adapt, it will be the poor who suffer most from climate change, said
IPCC chairman R.K. Pachauri in the report "Up in smoke?" released
last month.
"The impacts
of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries
and the poor persons within all countries," he said, meaning the
lot of millions of peasants could become far worse than it is now.