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CLIMATE CHANGE: China and India Can Do More – UN Official

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Nov 19 2007 (IPS) - A United Nations official has urged Asian giants China and India to shoulder greater responsibility for a healthier earth when talks begin at a major climate change conference to be held on the Indonesian resort-island of Bali in December.

‘’China and India are large emitters of greenhouse gases (GhGs), so they have to be much more forthcoming than in the past,’’ Han Seung-Soo, the U.N. secretary-general’s special envoy on climate change, said in an interview. ‘’The leaders of India and China should view this not as a problem facing themselves, but a problem facing the world.’’

‘’As global leaders they have to take part in it more actively,’’ added Han, shortly after delivering a speech on the opening day of a three-day regional meeting in the Thai capital. The Bangkok event, hosted by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), aims to examine much needed responses from countries across the region to meet the challenges posed by environmental damage.

Currently, according to available reports, Asia produces 34 percent of the world’s GhGs. And China ranks alongside the United States as one of the world’s leading producers of GhG due to its soaring demand for fossil fuels to run its economic engine.

By 2009, the Asian powerhouse is expected to top the global list of GhG producers. India is expected to be close on China’s tail in over a decade, given the expected increase in coal usage to meet the domestic energy demands on the South Asian sub-continent.

Yet at the same time, the U.N official told the Bangkok meeting that Asia’s quest to reach new development targets for its people cannot be ignored. After all, the region is home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, of which some 600 million go without safe water and over 800 million lack access to electricity. ‘’We have to find a new paradigm for some complementarity between growth and the environment,’’ he said.

Han’s comments offered a clue to the range of debates expected to unfold during the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will run from Dec. 3 – 14 in Bali. The world body is hoping that the international meeting, due to draw government representatives from over 180 countries, will serve as a platform to draft a new global blueprint to stem the tide of devastation expected in the coming years as the earth’s temperature rises.

The urgency for an international pact that all countries agree to implement is reflected in a steady stream of studies and reports on the perilous state of the world’s environment being released ahead of the Bali conference. Asian and Pacific countries are already feeling the effects of the warming global environment, as witnessed from the extreme weather patterns that have shattered communities, the reports argue.

This region is ‘’already the major victim of extreme weather events,’’ noted a study released by ESCAP for this week’s meeting. ‘’In 2006, the region accounted for 74 percent of over 21,000 casualties from natural disasters in the world.’’

Glaciers melting in the Himalayas are ‘’projected to increase flooding, and rock avalanches from destabilised slopes, and to affect water resources, within the next two to three decades. This will be followed by decreased river flows as the glaciers recede,’’ it adds.

The environmental damage will be as dire on the other end of the topography, closer to the sea. ‘’Coastal areas, especially heavily populated mega-delta regions in South, East and South-east Asia will be at greatest risk owing to increased flooding from the sea and, in some mega-deltas, flooding from the rivers,’’ reveals ESCAP.

Another report, ‘Up in Smoke: Asia and the Pacific’, which was released Monday, mirrored a similar concern. ‘’Vietnam will encounter some of the worst impacts due to rising sea level,’’ it states. ‘’Should climate change result in a one-metre sea-level rise, Vietnam could incur losses totalling 17 billion U.S. dollars per year and lose more than 12 percent of its most fertile land.’’

This stems from the most productive agriculture land in this South-east Asian nation being spread across the low-lying areas of the Red River and the Mekong Delta, adds the report, which was published by a coalition of leading British environment and development groups. ‘’Over 17 million people could lose their homes, 14 million of whom live in the Mekong Delta region.’’

As worrying, according to this report, is the perilous state of the continent’s small farms in the face of a deteriorating environment. ‘’To cope with a changing environment, Asian small-scale agriculture will need dramatically increased support,’’ where ‘’locally adapted crop diversification that boosts biodiversity’’ is encouraged, it states.

After all, the region is home to 87 percent of the world’s known 400 million small farms, most of which depend on a regular pattern of rainfall to water their fields, adds the global report. ‘’China alone accounts for almost half followed by India with 23 percent. Many Asian countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam are also home to millions of small-scale farmers.’’

In fact, the price that Asia’s poorest countries, like Bangladesh, will have to pay due to climate change will continue to remain disproportionate to the damage they cause to the environment. ‘’We are an insignificant polluter but suffer the most,’’ Mohammed Eakub Ali, a diplomat from the South Asian country, said in an interview. ‘’Fifteen percent of Bangladesh’s land will be submerged by the sea if the sea-level rises, affecting 16 coastal districts.’’