BBC 19 Nov 07
Climate change will reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, campaigners claim.
A report by a coalition of environment and aid agencies calls for urgent action to avert the threat.
The Working Group on Climate Change and Development says industrialised countries must cut carbon emissions massively by mid-century.
The coalition calls on the UK government to set an example by championing renewable energy.
The report - Up In Smoke? Asia and the Pacific - says Asia is "effectively on the front line of climate change", as it is home to almost two-thirds of the world's population.
And with half of this population living near the coast, billions are directly vulnerable to sea-level rise driven by a warming world.
The report says Asia is where the "human drama of climate change" will largely be played out.
The report's author, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation (Nef), said: "If those painfully won improvements in social and economic conditions can be blown away in a few but increasingly frequent and extreme weather events, we have to rethink about how we go about meeting people's basic needs."
The coalition's 21 members include ActionAid International, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF.
Nef, together with the International Institute for Environment and Development, organised the report's production.
The coalition previously published a study in October 2004 saying global warming threatened poverty reduction and urged industrial countries to cut their carbon emissions dramatically. It said such action now was "even more pressing".
UN talks
The report comes as world leaders prepare for UN climate change talks in Bali next month.
Nazmul Chowdhury, from the Disappearing Lands project, says: "Before the Bali meeting, we must make our voices heard, and demand international leaders take urgent and ambitious action.
"Without this, Asia's vulnerable will continue to suffer, as will communities worldwide who are contributing least to climate change."
Andrew Simms said he hoped the talks would help bring a "paradigm shift in the attitude of developing countries".
"We need to start talking about emissions reduction targets that are in line with the science rather than in line with what negotiators think they can get away with," he told BBC News.
As well as cutting global emissions by at least 80% by 2050, the report calls on richer counties to lead by example and champion renewable energy.
The coalition says Asian countries need to be convinced not to go down the fossil fuel energy route of "get rich quick, stay poor long".
Mr Simms said: "Practical difficulties and a lack of rich country leadership on climate change mean Asia is unlikely to abandon fossil fuels in the near future."
He added: "It is useless to turn around and point a finger at China's rising emissions if we are not showing the will and making the resources available to provide the changes necessary."
Asia Must Act Fast to Lessen Climate Change - Report
Jeremy Lovell, PlanetArk 19 Nov 07;
LONDON - Asia, home to nearly two-thirds of the world's people, must take urgent action to lessen the effects of climate change but needs considerable help from rich nations elsewhere, a report said on Monday.
"Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific," the last in a series of reports from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) think-tank, appears just after leading scientists said the effects of global warming would be all-pervasive and irreversible.
"Wealthy industrialised countries must act first and fastest to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but emerging Asian countries also need to contribute to climate change mitigation," it said.
The report called for sustainable development policies including ending deforestation and promoting energy efficiency and environmentally sensible renewable energy sources, and said booming palm oil production posed a problem in this regard.
More than half Asia's four billion people live near the coast, making them highly vulnerable to rising sea levels from melting glaciers, and all are open to the vagaries of the water cycle affecting food production, it said.
"It has become clear that Asia will see some major changes as a result of climate change, and several of these are becoming evident already," Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) head Rajendra Pachauri wrote in the report.
"Even more compelling are the projections of future climate change and associated impacts in Asia," he added.
The IPCC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize this year along with former US vice president Al Gore, issued the leading scientists' warning that climate change was irreversible.
DIRTY AIR, POLLUTED WATER
The NEF echoed the message in its report on Asia, saying climate change was likely to have a dire effect on air quality and to increase the pollution and scarcity of water, while the rising population put growing demands on scarce resources.
The report said Asia contained nearly 90 percent of the world's small farms -- China accounting for half and India one quarter -- which produced much of the food but faced major climate change-induced difficulties.
"To cope with a changing environment, Asian small-scale agriculture will need dramatically increased support," it said.
The report, like that of the IPCC, is aimed at a meeting of UN environment ministers next month on the Indonesian island of Bali whose subject is climate change and how to deal with it.
The goal of the Dec 3-14 Bali meeting is to agree to start urgent talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on cutting carbon gas emissions, which expires in 2012.
Scientists say there is no time left for failure, either in Bali or in the global negotiations the Bali talks should launch.
"There are less than 10 years before global emissions must start to decline; instead, emissions from Britain and other wealthy industrialised countries are still rising remorselessly," the NEF said.
Officials involved in preliminary discussions say the mood about the Bali meeting is good, but many major problems remain and there is no certainty of a positive outcome. (Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; editing by Tim Pearce)
Climate change threatens Asian development: report
Yahoo News 19 Nov 07;
Decades of development in Asia will be reversed by climate change, threatening the lives of millions of people, environmentalists and aid agencies warned Monday.
The Working Group on Climate Change and Development, an umbrella group of greens and aid groups, said Asia was on the frontline of the climate change threat.
"Asia is at a critical juncture as the home to almost two thirds of humanity. It has made real advances in reducing poverty but lies on the frontline of impacts from climate change," said co-author Andrew Simms.
"Now if it follows a fossil-fuelled Western economic development path, it will set in train an irreversible course of events that will guarantee a great reversal in its own progress," added Simms of the New Economics Foundation.
The coalition's Up in Smoke report calls on industrialised nations to act "first and fastest" to cut emissions, ensure technology transfer and increase adaptation funds to help Asia deal with the effects of global warming.
"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," said Simms.
Over half of Asia's four billion-strong population lives near coasts, putting them in danger from sea-level rises, while more extreme weather patterns threaten the whole region, the report says.
The group said India and China, the region's two biggest economies and emerging global giants, should move away from coal in favour of renewable power which could provide them with long-term energy security.
Chinese agricultural productivity will fall by 5-10 percent if no action is taken, with the production of wheat, rice and corn decreasing by up to 37 percent in the second half of this century, it noted.
Countries such as Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to climate change in the form of flooding and droughts.
India meanwhile could be threatened by energy and food supply insecurity, reduced fresh water supplies and increases in extreme weather events, the report says.
The Working Group comprises aid agencies and green organizations including ActionAid, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam and WWF.
