Climate Change Will Destroy Asia's Gains, Study Says

Global warming will send Asia's social and economic progress into reverse unless immediate action is taken to tackle climate change, according to a report today.

Wealthy countries should slash greenhouse gas emissions and help Asian countries reduce their reliance on fossil fuels by promoting and investing in sustainable and renewable energy across the region, according to the report, entitled Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific.

The paper, published by the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a group of environmental and development organizations, says more than 60% of the world's population live in Asia, many in coastal areas and on small farms where they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

RK Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in a foreword to the report: "It has become clear that Asia would see some major changes as a result of the impacts of climate change, and several of these are becoming evident already. Even more compelling are the projections for future climate change and associated impacts in Asia, which require an integration of adaptation to climate change with development policies."

The publication comes ahead of a United Nations conference in Bali next month designed to produce a new international framework on emission reductions to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

"Unless a decisive international agreement is reached, and soon, the lives of those living on the front line of climate change will go up in smoke," the report warns.

It urges western governments to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions immediately and to reach a target of 80% reduction by 2050.

The report also calls for a halt to forest clearance to make way for biofuel crops, and urges the introduction of coordinated plans to help communities threatened by climate change and those who will become environmental refugees.

Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation and a co-author of the report, said that if Asia followed a western-style, fossil-fueled development plan, "it will set in train an irreversible course of events that will guarantee a great reversal of its own progress.

"Practical difficulties and a lack of rich-country leadership on climate change mean Asia is unlikely to abandon fossil fuels in the near future.

"To prevent catastrophic global warming, the only feasible alternative is for wealthy countries to dramatically reduce their 'luxury' greenhouse gas emissions, so that the 'survival' emissions of people in poor countries do not cause disaster."