Friday, July 3, 2009

Economics of Climate Change in SEA

I recently attended a presentation on a report called the Economics of Climate Change in SEA. It's a very interesting look at the financial aspects of NOT doing anything to tackle climate change and the cost of and benefits of actually DOING something.

The report is a modelled after the Stearn Review but it focuses on SEA. It uses for it's analysis four countries - Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia. Having the largest amount of coastal lines (when comparing by continents), being already of relatively warm temperature, over 45% of reliance on sustenance agriculture, SEA will be severely affected by climate change. And if no urgent measures and actions is taken for South East Asia, it is believed that temperature may rise 4.8 degree centigrade and sea level will rise by 70cm by 2100 from 1990 levels. One thing they highlighted was that rice production could decrease by 50%. Scary thought for us rice loving Asians. In financial terms, loss of GDP could amount to over 6.7% which is twice more than the global average. This means it seems that we in SEA will get it worse than most in the rest of the world.

In the report, it details the amount of cost investments and the benefits it ill bring at the end of the projected period. I suggest that you read the report lest I misdocument or misinterpret the data.


or just go to www.adb.org

It's not wholly applicable to Malaysia since every country differs. And as one individual noted during the Q&A, Malaysia's largest source of GHG emission is not due to LULUCF (land use, land use change and forestry) but energy. The report claims that the largest contributor is LULUCF amounting to over 75% of total SEA GHG emissions. Although I personally feel differently about this particular issue that individual highlighted, I haven't yet got the facts to justify it.

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