Heavy Cost of Climate Change

The mounting costs from climate change have come to the fore during the first week of negotiations here in Bangkok.

A World Bank report released on the sidelines of the talks said developing countries faced an annual bill of 100 billion US dollars for the costs of adaptation to climate change over the forty years to 2050.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer says money is a major challenge. “Limiting emissions, growth adapting and mobilizing technology are only going to happen if we have a clearer sense how finance is going to be mobilized managed and dispersed,” he says. “What I would expect to see or hope to see at the end of this meeting in Bangkok is a clearer picture of the contours of a practical Copenhagen agreement.”

Serious implications

Climate scientists say just a few degrees increase in global temperatures will have potentially disastrous impacts on communities and societies. In a series of reports, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) also painted a stark picture of sharply rising food prices due to water shortages, weakening energy security and mass migration. The ADB warned grain prices could rise between 30 and 100 per cent over the next 40 years due in part to the impact of climate change.

Mark Rosegrant, a director with the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, warned of social instability as the more than two billion Asians dependent on agriculture face growing threats from climate change.

“Not only are food prices going to be higher but the water is going to be scarcer, land is going to be scarcer,” he said. “It is going to be neighbours against each other. So there is really potential for instability there. And that goes along with the objective deterioration in the environment that you’re going to have the potential for very significant social deterioration and the loosening of the social bonds as well.”

Some positive moves

But there is some good news as well. Both Nepal and Vietnam report success in efforts at reforestation, seen as a key step to offset greenhouse gas emissions. Nepalese communities have replanted over one and a quarter million hectares of degraded forest area over the past 10 years.

Pham Manh Cuong, a specialist from Vietnam’s Department of Forestry says his country has succeeded in reversing forest degradation.

“In Vietnam in recent years we see net reforestation – it means that forest cover expanded over time since the mid-1990s up to now. However, the deforestation and forest degradation are still very serious in some regions like in the central highlands.”

Delegates talk of grounds for optimism in drafting a climate change convention in Copenhagen after the statements by leaders at the United Nations, including the United States, China and Japan. But much remains to be done, they say, with little time left before the December meeting.

Author: Ron Corben (Bangkok)
Editor: Thomas Bärthlein