No island is an island - Four Degrees of Global Warming - page 177

Regional predictions of impacts of a Four Degree World
Recent estimates and projections for the impacts of global warming in the Asia
Pacific region, including in reports by the IPCC, the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) and individual country agencies, contain a common narrative. The
region is highly vulnerable to climate change, with many 'climate hotspots', and
many countries and communities already struggling to deal with the phenomena
of 'natural disasters' caused by climatic variability, such as cyclones, droughts and
extreme rainfall. The ADB report on climate and migration observes that Asia
and the Pacific is one of the world's most natural disaster-prone regions. Eight
of the fifteen countries at highest risk of experiencing three or more natural
hazards annually are in Asia and the Pacific, while half of the top sixty at risk of
experiencing two or more hazards are in the region. There is a strong correlation
between areas most at risk from natural hazards and areas at greatest risk of being
impacted by climate change (ADB, 2012).
Even well before we get to a Four Degree World, and certainly once we are
there, the following impacts are expected within the Asia Pacific region:
● progressive inundation of low-lying states and deltaic regions caused by
sea-level rise and storm surges, causing the decline or abandonment of coastal
settlements and the displacement of coastal populations;
● an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme events: storms, floods,
droughts and forest fires;
● growing water shortages caused by the decline of glacial melt from the
Himalayas, and changing rainfall patterns;
● a decrease in food security and the rise (or return) of regions of food shortages
and mass starvation as crops fail and marine fisheries collapse;
● an increase in disease and associated mortality;
● an increase in economic hardship and growing problems for the stability of
poorer states within the region;
● significant impacts on the already stressed ecosystems and biodiversity of the
region, including elevated rates of extinction over the coming century in
regional ecosystems.
These are, as Steffen and Griggs note in Chapter 7 , compounding problems.
The higher the increase in global and regional temperature, the greater the
vulnerability of regional states and communities to these impacts, and the more
likely that already low levels of capacity to deal with them will be overrun by
circumstances and events. The situation will be particularly acute in China,
South Asia, South-East Asia, Indonesia and, especially, the Pacific. For example,
coastal flooding poses the greatest climate change-related induced risk in Asia,
with around one-third of its population living in areas considered to be at risk.
These populations are concentrated in large cities in low-lying coastal areas
in Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam (Brecht
et al., 2012). The Mekong Delta will be particularly affected, as will coastal