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2 Southeast Asia's climate-change
challenge By Andrew Symon
SINGAPORE - Southeast Asia is possibly one
of the most vulnerable areas in the
global-climate-change scenarios now being put
forward by scientists. Many of the region's
estimated 500 million people live in either
low-lying river deltas or far-flung islands that
will be inundated if waters rise significantly.
Some idea of the damage that climate
change could cause over time was witnessed in the
tsunami that inundated and destroyed coastal
settlements on Indonesia's Sumatra island in
December
2004. While the tsunami was a
sudden shock that came without warning, it gave a
geographic perspective to what could be
anticipated under model scenarios of a more
gradual increase in sea and river-delta water
levels caused by climate change.
The
international climate-change spotlight has not yet
fallen on Southeast Asia. With the key question
now being addressed - what will succeed the
present Kyoto Accord when it expires in 2012 -
attention is focused more on the industrializing
giants - China, India and Brazil - and how they
should be incorporated under a successor
framework. But Southeast Asia's 500 million people
arguably should not be overlooked.
To
date, concern and debate over greenhouse-gas
emission and climate change remain muted in
Southeast Asia. Eight countries in the region,
namely Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, have
ratified the 1997 Kyoto Accord to the 1992 United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Landlocked Laos has not, nor has the tiny
petroleum-rich Islamic sultanate of Brunei. As
developing countries - including Singapore, which
retains this status formally in international
organizations despite its developed-world per
capita income - none face any mandatory
obligations to reduce gases that contribute to the
so-called greenhouse effect, the trapping of the
sun's heat within the atmosphere.
The
region can take advantage of the Kyoto Accord's
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), whereby
developed countries having to meet targets under
Kyoto can gain credits by funding projects in
non-compliance countries that reduce greenhouse
emissions. But as of mid-November 2006, of the 173
CDM projects established or seeking registration
in East Asia, 70% were in India, 14% in China and
only 12% in Southeast Asia.
Despite Kyoto
and the climate-change debate elsewhere, energy
production and consumption in Southeast Asia
remain business as usual. Individual governments
and the regional Association of Southeast Asian
Nations often make assertions about the
desirability of greater energy efficiency, cleaner
energy technologies and greater reliance on
renewables. But at the moment there is no major
departure from the region's 1990s trends in energy
use.
The Singaporean government appears to
be positioning itself for what it must see as the
need for greater regional efforts over climate
change. After ratifying Kyoto late last year,
Singapore recently announced a new program to
promote research and development, test-bedding and
undertaking pilot projects in clean energy on the
island.
These would potentially have
applications elsewhere. Underlying Singapore's new
enthusiasm for clean energy is a week of
government-endorsed conferences on biofuels,
carbon trading, and finance for renewable energy,
as well as an industry exhibition, Sustainable
Energy Asia, to be held on June 12-15.
Public concern in the region is not
especially strong compared with the situation in,
say, Western Europe, the United States and
Australia (even though the latter two countries
are not signatories to the Kyoto Accord). The
public focus on the issues varies from country to
country. In Thailand, for example, community and
non-governmental opposition to plans to build
coal-fired power plants have historically been
strong, forcing the government to postpone
projects indefinitely in 2002.
The smog
ahead Yet projections by the Asia-Pacific
Energy Research Center (APERC) in Tokyo, a body
operating under the auspices of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, show a fourfold
increase in total carbon-dioxide emissions - the
major greenhouse gas - from 2002 to 2030 produced
by energy production and consumption in Southeast
Asia.
The total will be twice that of
Japan in 2030, nearly a third of the US total, and
a quarter that of China (China and the US will be
the world's largest and second-largest emitters of
greenhouse gases in 2030). Note, though, that
these projections in APERC's 2006 APEC Energy
Demand and Supply Outlook, Projections to 2030,
assume no major departure from existing energy
production and consumption patterns as a result of
policies on greenhouse gases and climate change.
One major Southeast Asia-related negative
impact on international greenhouse-gas reduction
efforts comes from the ongoing destruction of the
region's forests and jungles, especially in
Indonesia's Kalimantan and Sumatra, in the
Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah on Borneo
island, and in the Mekong region in the mountains
in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, as well as in
Myanmar and Thailand. Southeast Asia's extensive
wet rice agriculture also results in the release
of another greenhouse gas, methane.
There
are also increasing efforts both commercially and
promoted by government to develop and expand
biofuel production - bio-diesel from palm oil is
especially favored. This drive has been sparked by
both high global petroleum prices and the region's
increasing reliance on petroleum imports,
particularly from the Middle East.
Although biofuel is often pitched as a
sustainable energy source, there is concern that
the rush to develop it results or will result in
more destruction of old forests to clear the way
for oil-palm plantations. The large-scale
expansion of palm-oil production in Indonesia's
Sumatra and in Kalimantan on Borneo, which has
been ongoing for the past decade, is already
responsible for another major environmental
problem - the haze that affects Singapore,
Malaysia and Indonesia when land is burned to
prepare for clearing.
There is a regional
shift under way toward more natural gas, which is
desirable in terms of its lower carbon-dioxide
emissions, though it is sometimes forgotten that
upstream production often releases carbon dioxide
unless engineering measures are taken to
re-inject
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