Business Times 20 Nov 07;
(SINGAPORE) Climate change may cut rice and wheat yields in Asia and wipe out decades of social and economic progress, a report on the environment says.
'An increase of just one degree Celsius in night-time temperatures during the growing season will reduce Asian rice yields by 10 per cent,' said environmental group Greenpeace, one of the contributors to the Up in Smoke report. 'Wheat production could by fall 32 per cent by 2050.'
The report comes just before the 10 members of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) plus China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand pledge to reduce the impact on global warming at their summit meeting here tomorrow.
'Slowing and reversing these threats is the defining challenge of our age,' UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said last week at the release of the world body's panel report on the climate and emissions, ahead of a conference in Bali on global warming.
The US is the world's biggest producer of man-made carbon dioxide, followed by China, with India ranked fourth, according to the UN. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.
The Up in Smoke report said that China's wheat, rice and corn yields could fall by as much as 37 per cent at the end of the century from drought.
WWF, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth, the World Council of Churches, Indiadisasters.org and Down to Earth Indonesia were also among the report's 35 contributors.
'In India, there have been some recent floods affecting 28 million people and also widespread drought in some Indian states,' Greenpeace said. 'If no action is taken, 30 per cent of India's food production could be lost.'
Warmer weather patterns from global warming will mean less predictable rainfall and monsoon seasons 'around which farming systems are designed and more extreme tropical cyclones'.
Bangladesh's latest tropical cyclone over the weekend has killed more than 2,000 people. Officials said that the death toll may rise. About 70 per cent of Bangladesh's population derive their income from agriculture or related industries.
The report also details the possible effects on individual countries in the region, particularly poorer communities.
The UN said that keeping greenhouse gases at the current levels would still result in a temperature rise beyond 2100 of at least two degrees Celsius, and a sea level increase of at least 40 cm.
The report 'recommends that the international community commit to meaningful and mandatory emissions cuts to ensure that global temperature increases stay below two degrees Celsius', Greenpeace said in a statement.
The Singapore meeting, called the East Asia Summit, is scheduled to adopt the 'Singapore Declaration on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment' tomorrow.
The draft statement, obtained by Bloomberg News, calls for boosting forest cover by 15 million ha by 2020 and reducing energy usage per unit of gross domestic production by a quarter by 2030.
The declaration follows a pledge by Asean to expand forest cover by 10 million ha over the same time frame.
Civic groups have said that increasing forest cover is not enough and emissions targets need to be set.
Climate change may continue for centuries, and governments will have to spend billions of dollars annually to slow warming and adapt to its effects, a UN panel said on Saturday\. \-- Bloomberg
