Climate change responses to shape Asia's future

Challenges such as extreme weather, rising seas and worsening scarcity of drinking water are forcing many Asian governments to confront the changes being wrought by a warming planet even as some point to rich Western nations as major culprits.
Millions of people in the region have already been displaced by floods and droughts thought related to global warming, a United Nations scientific panel said in a report meant to guide policymakers and form the foundation for a new climate treaty due next year.
Experts say Asia and the South Pacific, home to 4.3 billion people or 60 per cent of all humankind, faces rising risks from climate change that threaten food security, public health and social order.

Scientists who back the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say there is overwhelming evidence that carbon emissions from industrialization and energy-intensive modern lifestyles have driven an increase in the world's average temperature over the past century.
Failed global efforts to significantly reduce emissions means that nations are now focusing efforts on adapting to a hotter earth.
Just as colonialism determined much of Asia's past, adapting to profound disruptions from climate change will determine the region's future, said Rajendra Kuma Pachauri, a co-chairman of the climate panel who has spent the past 26 years working on the issue.

"We have no choice but to start mitigating for climate change today," he said.

Asia's growing economic importance and rapidly urbanizing populations will give it a pivotal role in humanity's handling of climate change, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh.
"It's where the population is, it's where the young population is, it's where the growth dynamism will occur in the next few decades," Huq said after the IPCC met in Yokohama to endorse a summary of a 32-volume report.
The climate report outlines in unprecedented detail the regional-level threat of conflicts, food shortages, rising deaths from diseases spread through contaminated water and mosquito-borne illnesses such as dengue and malaria. In a region where memories of past famines remain fresh, floods and droughts will likely worsen poverty while pushing food prices and other costs higher, the report said.

"There are so many Asian countries that are among the most vulnerable. We've seen so many extreme events hit Asia in recent years," said Kelly Levin, a senior associate at the World Resources Institute.
India, the fourth biggest energy consumer and third-largest emitter of carbon, has begun to increase use of renewable energy, doubling its solar generation capacity in 2013, albeit from a modest level, and aiming to generate 15 per cent of its power through renewable energy by 2020.