The report ‘Asia-Pacific Climate Report 2024: Catalyzing Finance and Policy solutions’ warns that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise and without stronger mitigation efforts, Asia will experience more extreme heat, floods, storms, and infectious diseases in the coming years – bad news indeed for the marginalized local communities in the underdeveloped pockets of the continent.
By Salam Rajesh
Asia suffers from and contributes to the climate crisis. This high sounding and alarming score is the focus of a recent report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its assessment of the current global climate crisis.
The report ‘Asia-Pacific Climate Report 2024: Catalyzing Finance and Policy solutions’ warns that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise and without stronger mitigation efforts, Asia will experience more extreme heat, floods, storms, and infectious diseases in the coming years – bad news indeed for the marginalized local communities in the underdeveloped pockets of the continent.
Most parts of Asia suffered extensively from extreme weather events in this year and in recent past. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Japan, China, Indonesia were all subject to many forms of nature’s fury. Cyclones hit the coastlines while heavy rainfall wreck havoc in the sub-Himalayan regions devastating homes and properties with cloudbursts and heavy flash floods.
Asia generated about half of the global GHG emissions during 2021, surpassing many historically high emitters. The increase over the past two decades was driven by the rising domestic consumption, energy demand, and production for advanced economies.
The People’s Republic of China accounted for two-thirds of the GHG emission increase, while South Asia contributed 19.3% and Southeast Asia 15.4%. The energy sector is the largest contributor to the region’s emissions (77.6%), primarily due to a heavy reliance on fossil fuels, while the other high-emitting sources are agriculture (10.6%) and industrial processes (8.6%), the report said.
People’s concern on climate change is high, as is the support for ambitious climate actions on ground. This understanding was clear in the ADB’s climate change perception survey conducted during 2024 that found 91% of the respondents in 14 economies viewed climate change as a serious problem. Additionally, 84% of the respondents reported that they and their families are already experiencing climate change impacts or expect to within the next decade.
Based on this finding, the report asserted that improving policy design, addressing inequalities, and increasing awareness about climate action can boost public support. These are basically lacking in most States where the relevant government agencies are yet to push their campaigns in earnest, and where both political and bureaucratic push and pulls are seen as hampering fast and smooth operations.
Adaptation is the key to addressing large impacts, the report stated while stressing that in the near term, only adaptation can alter climate losses. Effective adaptation policy must address slow onset changes and a greater frequency, and the intensity of fast onset extreme events, while at the same time considering other development needs, it stated.
Adaptation opportunities require enhanced analysis of climate change impacts, and although most countries have prepared their National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and included adaptation in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), they are yet to integrate adaptation into medium-term development plans and expenditure frameworks, the report asserted.
While emphasizing that carbon taxation can be a powerful mechanism to reduce emissions cost effectively, the ADB report suggested that carbon tax is not only an efficient approach to reducing emissions, but can also raise significant revenues that could be redirected to the highest value public uses.
Forty-four economies, representing 98% of Asia’s emissions, have ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement and submitted their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) with commitments to cut GHG emissions and adapt to climate change, the report said.
In addition, 36 of these economies have announced or adopted net zero targets. However, current actions fall short of what is needed to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius, or, ideally, 1.5 degrees Celsius by the target year 2050. Yet, both the NDCs and the net zero targets lack concrete, sector-specific emission reduction road maps, the ADB report points out.
It may be recalled that recent climate reports had contended that the ten warmest years since global temperatures started being recorded in the year 1850 all occurred during the recent years of 2014 to 2023, while the year 2023 contained the warmest months on record in a century’s time, raising fears of worst times to come in the immediate future unless corrective measures are taken up post-haste.
With more rainfall and glacial melt, flows in major river systems will increase, especially in South Asia, the report asserted, while more concentrated and intense rainfall, as well as more storm events, would lead to increased inundation in low-lying areas and landslides in the mountainous areas. Models suggested that around one trillion US Dollar worth of annual flood damage could occur by year 2070 under high end emissions scenario, primarily in South Asia, according to the ADB assessment.
Many cities and States in India experienced unprecedented floods this current year, where Assam, Manipur, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, and many more were subject to harsh conditions of floods from heavy rains brought in by successive cyclones circulating in both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
Quite interestingly, the report stressed that the core potential of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) in carbon markets to address the climate crisis is projected to be in the agriculture sector, forestry (avoided deforestation, afforestation and reforestation, and improved forest management), and the restoration and conservation of wetlands.
Using the year 2030 as the benchmark, agriculture at 43% has the highest carbon market potential under NBS measures, followed by avoided deforestation at 32%, afforestation and reforestation at 11%, improved forest management at 7%, and the restoration and conservation of wetlands at 7%, the report stated.
The top five economies with the highest potential in agriculture carbon markets are the United States, People’s Republic of China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. The potential for avoided deforestation is largest in Latin America and Asia, particularly in Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Indonesia and Malaysia. Considering land mass as the measure, the largest mitigation potential across all NBS carbon market activities lies in Indonesia, Malaysia, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Belize, the report said.
Things, of course, usually do not sail smoothly on many instances, more specifically concerning state policies and legislation. Reflecting on the effects of carbon pricing on the developing economies, the ADB report opines that despite strong momentum toward carbon pricing, there are certain concerns for the developing economies.
There has been speculation that efforts to implement carbon pricing may lead to a loss of global competitiveness, the report stated while drawing attention that an additional concern is the risk of carbon leakage in response to carbon pricing, with firms shifting production out of certain jurisdictions to avoid paying a carbon price, thereby reducing the ability of Governments to regulate GHG emissions.
When economies develop ploys to avoid paying ‘tax’ for their carbon emissions, and at the same time continuing with their businesses that contribute to GHG emissions, the whole exercise at reduction in emissions then becomes futile, and, therefore, the cycle of worry on global warming and other climate crisis could continue to haunt humans across the globe for decades.