Uniting with the world to combat climate change
ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity 5 Jun 09
The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity, our partners at the European Commission, and our stakeholders in the 10 ASEAN Member States, join the rest of the world in celebrating World Environment Day 2009.
This year’s theme is “Your Planet Needs You! Unite to Combat Climate Change.” The topic is particularly important and timely for us as it comes in the heels of a study released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in April 2009, reiterating that Southeast Asia faces a bleak future if governments do not act quickly to address climate change.
Entitled “The Economics of Climate Change in Southeast Asia: A Regional Review,” the study found that Southeast Asia will be hit hard by climate change, causing the region’s agriculture-dependent economies to contract by as much as 6.7 percent annually by the end of the century. It also identified Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam as the most vulnerable countries.
With 80 percent of the region’s over 560 million people living within 100 kilometers of the coastline, we do have cause for concern. As the ADB report highlighted, the sea level is rising one to three millimeters annually, and average temperature rose 0.1 to 0.3 degrees Celsius between 1951 and 2000. Already, Southeast Asia is experiencing the impacts of climate change. It devastated by a spate of typhoons, floods, cyclones, heat waves, drought, and other calamities brought about by extreme weather conditions in recent years. Such weather has resulted in water shortages, poor agricultural production, forest fires and coastal degradation, which then create negative impacts on food security and human health.
With Southeast Asia cradling 20 percent of the world’s total known plant and animal species, the loss of its natural treasures due to climate change will also have a significant impact on the entire global sustainability.
There is ample evidence that climate change affects biodiversity. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, climate change is likely to become the dominant direct driver of biodiversity loss by the end of the century. Climate change is already forcing biodiversity to adapt either through shifting habitat, or changing life cycles. We stand to lose thousands of species.
The loss of biodiversity will have far-reaching impacts on all of us – food insecurity, loss of livelihood, poverty. In many parts of the globe, these are already grim realities.
There is an inextricable connection between climate change and biodiversity. While climate change is a driver of biodiversity loss, the deterioration of habitats and loss of biodiversity also worsen climate change. Deforestation, for example, is currently estimated to be 20 percent of all human-induced CO2 emissions.
If no action is done to combat climate change, the peoples of the ASEAN region stand to lose a great deal. Dire consequences in all sectors could seriously hinder Southeast Asia’s sustainable development and poverty reduction efforts.
The ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity encourages all citizens of the ASEAN region to take part in efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Fighting global warming and its impacts is a shared responsibility among all of us who stand to lose so much – our planet and its various natural treasures that sustain our very existence. There are practical actions we can take:
* Plant trees. This will increase the size of existing carbon pools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
* Promote farmer-centered participatory approaches and indigenous knowledge and technologies toward cycling and use of organic materials in low-input farming systems.
* Recycle.
* Save on energy.
* Save on paper.
* Save on fuel.
* Promote biodiversity conservation.
We call on citizens in the ASEAN region to contribute their share in this battle against climate change. Your planet needs you! Let us all unite to combat climate change.
Rodrigo U. Fuentes
Executive Director
ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity
