Turning up heat for a climate deal

This year is the hottest for 4,000 years, scientists tell us. But what’s more important is what this says about the urgent need for a global climate deal in around one month’s time.

Seven out of nine months this year have registered the highest global average temperatures ever recorded, and the first nine months were the hottest since 1880. The average surface temperature for September was at least 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than throughout the 20th century.

These alarming numbers highlight how important it is that a deal be reached in December, when countries gather for the COP21 meeting in Paris to forge a global agreement to limit climate change.

But whatever happens in Paris, Asia’s governments, businesses and local communities need to proactively address climate change if the newly-minted Sustainable Development Goals are to be achieved at all, let alone by the 2030 deadline. At stake is the future sustainability of the region’s economies and environment, as well as the health of its citizens.

It has been a relentlessly warm year across the Asia-Pacific. Heat waves have claimed more than 3,000 lives in India, as well as livestock. This was coupled with a sharp drop in rainfall in areas covered by the Southwest Monsoon, which was 14 percent weaker than last year.

Some parts of India received less than half the expected rainfall, with grave implications for food and water security. For example, a temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius can reduce rice yield by 10 percent. Likewise, a 5 percent deficit in rainfall can drag down India’s GDP by 1.75 percent. In Vietnam, water levels in reservoirs were down by 67 percent, causing alarm among farmers. Other Southeast Asian countries have suffered similarly.

This year has also been among the worst for haze from forest fires on the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra. High temperatures and dry weather intensified air pollution affecting the health of more than 50 million people in the country as well as in Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand and the Philippines.

The World Resources Institute has suggested that Indonesia’s forest fires this year released about 1.6 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, which is nearly equal to Brazil’s annual emissions. There were also several extreme weather events such as Typhoon Koppu in the Philippines.

What is causing this disruption? The culprit is perhaps an unusually strong El Nino current that is warming the Pacific Ocean, where the surface temperature has increased by up to 2.4 degrees Celsius above average. El Nino is not new, but it has been aggravated by climate change due to rising greenhouse gas emissions, which means extreme weather will become even more frequent.

Models predict that climate change could double the number of extreme El Ninos. Recent records suggest that the intensity of El Nino episodes climbed by 20 percent during the 20th century, and the trend is likely to continue. Scientists project that this year’s El Nino could be one of the four strongest since 1950, a sobering thought given that the latest El Nino in the late 1990s cost nearly $40 billion.

Climate negotiators have been working hard for the past three years to develop a legally binding, universal agreement to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. The last batch of formal meetings concluded with a 51-page draft for discussion in Paris. Boiling it down to a manageable size is a daunting task.

Over 150 governments submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to address climate change. The INDCs target reductions in global average emissions per capita of up to 9 percent by 2030. However, preliminary analyses show that these will not take us anywhere near the 2 degrees Celsius goal, let alone the 1.5 degrees Celsius target demanded by the most vulnerable countries, including many Pacific island nations.

Current pledges, even if fully realized, will lead to a global temperature rise of at least 2.7-3.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average by 2100. This will surely compound the difficulties of meeting the post-2015 SDGs in the Asia-Pacific.

It will hurt our economies, too. A recent study published in Nature magazine stated that rising temperatures due to unmitigated climate change would reduce global GDP per capita by 23 percent by 2100.

A multi-pronged approach to climate change and disaster risk reduction measures at all levels of development planning and operations is required. Investments in climate services and information systems must be ramped up to steer adaptation efforts in the region.

Use of stress-tolerant crops and livestock, community-based water conservation schemes, risk-sharing instruments like crop insurance, and climate-resilient infrastructure must be preferentially supported.

Efforts to reduce growth in greenhouse gas emissions from the region must be accelerated by energy efficiency measures, increased use of renewable energy, sustainable land use, and environmentally sustainable transport and waste management practices.

Without redoubling our efforts on climate, the 21st century will not be Asia’s century, and the SDGs may never be realized.

*The author is principal climate change specialist at ADB’s Southeast Asia Department.

by Ancha Srinivasan