Weather disasters that supposedly occur once every thousand years are actually a typical occurrence and are brought on by human-caused climate change.
In Southeast Asia, a rapidly increasing risk profile requires constructing resilience, not only to enable recovery, but additionally to stop even greater dangers. National-level policies within the region might want to allocate a much larger share of investment to each climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Singapore
The Green Plan 2030 is an example of viewing climate change as an existential threat and devoting resources with a whole-of-government approach and foresight to investments in climate and energy. The plan, a living document that’s continuously evolving, includes concrete steps to extend trees and green spaces, reduce waste of solids and water, expand public transport and, most significantly, even when difficult to realize, switch away from polluting fuels fossil fuels in favour of renewable, clean energy.
However, rather more effort is required in Southeast Asia to create the conditions obligatory to drive sustainable development. The nature of the chance has modified from an extreme rare risk to a typical one. Much more emphasis must due to this fact be placed on stopping the worst effects of floods and storms, droughts and heatwaves. Such a change is obligatory, but politically difficult, because the advantages of green investments should not at all times visible immediately, but accumulate over time.
Southeast Asia under serious stress
As rising temperatures grip the world, Southeast Asia record temperatures have been recorded recently and are already causing a significant blow to lives and livelihoods. A 1% increase in temperature can increase food production costs by as much as 0.8%. Southeast Asia economies, as evidenced by increases in food prices within the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
With almost 700 million inhabitants, our region is considered one of the primary victims of worldwide warming. The Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, which top the lists of nations vulnerable to climate change, have the best numbers of individuals resettled attributable to natural disasters. Ironically, Southeast Asia can also be a significant source of additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Regional economies have grown in some cases 5% per 12 months during the last decade, with electricity demand growing at a rate of 6% per 12 months, most of that demand has unfortunately been met by fossil fuels. These polluting fuels make up about 75% of Southeast Asia’s electricity, about 50% from coal, and the green part of the grid is growing far too slowly.
Vietnam
Vietnam and Bangladesh illustrate the challenge of ensuring economic growth in step with climate motion. They rank among the world’s most vulnerable to flooding, and each is prone to losing a good portion of their GDP to climate damage. Vietnam GDP climate change losses were estimated at 3.2% in 2020 and are expected to rise to as much as 14.5% by 2050 in the absence of decisive motion.
Priority must be given to mitigation strategies similar to coastal embankments, residential and business zoning, infrastructure upgrades and stronger drainage systems.
The twin tasks of mitigation and adaptation
The consequence of those trends is that greenhouse gas emissions and disasters are causally linked. With current fossil fuel-based economic growth, sea levels will proceed to rise.
By 2050, the water level may increase by 0.2 meters in Singapore. Possibly there and elsewhere in low-lying Southeast Asia – together with subsidence or sinking of the bottom in coastal cities – such sea levels would cause devastation. The region clearly desires to be a number one advocate of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources, and ASEAN must make this its top priority.
Since the late nineties, ASEAN has argued that renewable energy sources are key to regional trade and integration based on regional energy networks. There are some regional power grids –11 shared power lines currently run between six pairs of ASEAN countries, but must deal with the volatility of renewable energy supplies. Making progress on cross-border integration is important, especially since Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia are energy importers.
Since the climate catastrophes we’re currently seeing are the results of carbon accumulation within the atmosphere that may persist for a long time, the priority of adapting to climate change is clear. Adaptation efforts should be multi-faceted, starting from spending on an infrastructure similar to drainage systems and coastal embankments to spending on social sectors, including health and safety networks. There can also be an actual have to call on stakeholders to work across traditional sector boundaries somewhat than in isolated silos.
More funding is required to cope with natural disasters, but this funding must be approved prematurely so that time shouldn’t be wasted in approving funding in times of crisis. Equally vital is the effective and timely deployment of funds with comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of their effectiveness on the bottom to assist improve outcomes.
A series of utmost weather conditions confirms scientific predictions regarding the impact of human-caused climate change on threats to lives and livelihoods. As Southeast Asia and other regions are busy coping with the immediate fallout of soaring temperatures and deadly floods, it’s imperative to arrange for future worst-case scenarios as well. To change this future direction for the higher, the general public must support disaster prevention and preparedness, not only disaster relief and rehabilitation.
Vinod Thomas is a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and creator of the brand new book, “Risk and Resilience in an Era of climate change”, Palgrave Macmillan, April 4, 2023.
