Climate Change Threatens Asian Development
Urban Ecology News. 2007.11.12
Asia will be hit especially hard by climate change, from China and India to tiny Pacific islands, and decades of human development across the continent will be pushed into reverse, says report.
According to the report, "Up In Smoke?", released by a group of British poverty and environmental groups including Oxfam and Friends of the Earth:
As far as climate change is concerned, Asia will increasingly be both major victim and major part of the problem.
Rapidly industrialising China is overtaking the US as the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitter with its vast programme of building coal-fired power stations, and India is likely to follow suit - while Indonesia is the world's third-biggest CO2 emitter, after the US and China, because of the amount of deforestation taking place.
Rich countries must lead by example
Only leadership by example from rich, industrialised countries, which put most of the CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place, will be able to persuade the Asian giants to follow a different path.
Andrew Simms of the new economics foundation and report co-editor:
Avoid carbon-intense development path
Asia is at a critical juncture as home to almost two-thirds of humanity. It has made real advances in reducing poverty, but lies on the front line of impacts from climate change. Now, if it follows a fossil-fuelled Western economic development path, it will set in train an reversible course of events that will guarantee a great reversal in its own progress.
Cut luxury emissions to allow survival emissions
To prevent catastrophic global warming, the only feasible alternative is for wealthy countries to dramatically reduce their "luxury" greenhouse gas emissions, so that the "survival" emissions of people in poor countries do not cause disaster. How else will we free up the environmental space necessary for Asia to develop?
Biofuels
The report gives a special and pointed warning about the rush to develop biofuels, in Indonesia especially, where huge areas of rainforest are being cut down for oil palm plantations, to make the palm oil that is an essential feedstock for biodiesel. It says that the "silver bullet of biofuels" could turn into a rush for fool's gold, with severe social and environmental consequences.
Links
Source: Rich West 'must set example' to protect Asian development from climate change catastrophe. Michael McCarthy. Independent (UK). 2007.11.12