Asia-Pacific prepares to face global warming
Asia-Pacific prepares to face global warming
MANILA (Agencies): Asia-Pacific nations declared a "state of emergency" Monday due to the threat of inundation faced by island states due to global warming, as developed countries were urged to reduce gaseous emissions by 20 percent by 2005.
The Manila declaration, supported by more than 100 top-level delegates representing 29 countries at the three-day Asia-Pacific Leaders Conference on Climate Change, warned of the threat of global warming on the economy, culture and communities of these island states and coastal nations.
Ata Qureshi, vice-president of the Washington-based Climate Institute said even a one-meter (3.3-foot) increase in water levels would result in the inundation of some islands.
This would have serious "implications for fisheries and economics, considering the population on an atoll is much more than the per-square density in Bangladesh," which is considered a populous country, he noted.
Developed countries were "primarily responsible," for the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs), the declaration said, and urged that these countries take the lead in reducing emissions, through technology transfer and funding assistance for developing alternative resources of energy.
Earlier, Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who attended opening ceremonies of the conference said "it would only be fair that those who have primarily polluted the environment take on a major responsibility for cleaning it up."
The conference urged developed countries to reduce 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions -- which are responsible for destroying the ozone layer and trapping the earth's heat, causing the meltdown of polar ice caps -- by 20 percent by the year 2005.
The industrialized world spews up to 23 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, up from 16 billion tons in 1972, Maurice Strong, chairman of The Earth Council said in a statement.
Qureshi warned that "it may be 100 times more expensive" to arrest the effects of GHGs if nations failed to act on the problem right now.
"If business as usual continues it is expected that by the year 2070 there will be a doubling" of the emissions, he said.
The declaration also expressed apprehension that future environmental and trade measures may be used to pressure developing nations into adopting policies detrimental to their economic growth.
China, which is engaged in a trade row with the US on copyright laws, voiced concern that tariff measures "may be concealed in environmental rules or standards" to hamper economic competitiveness of their products, Philippine senator Heherson Alvarez, convener of the conference, said.
Bhutto and Philippine President Fidel Ramos also echoed the same sentiments saying that any agreement to stabilize GHGs must take into consideration the status of each country's development.
"It would be a terrible irony if the resulting agreement would freeze the Third World in a state of underdevelopment," Ramos said at opening remarks last Saturday.
At the same time, the declaration urged cooperation between developed and developing countries, as well as public and private partnerships in researching alternative and renewable energy sources.
Meanwhile, the organizers of the Manila conference sad earlier that Asia-Pacific region is facing "environmental Armaggedon" because of global warming.
Entire nations are likely to become submerged as the seas rise and weather patterns will change dramatically, producing "ferocious typhoons and searing droughts", they said.
"Climate change is the most dangerous and challenging consequence of global pollution," Heherson Alvarez, chairman of the Philippine Senate's environmental committee, said in a statement.
"It is as threatening as the challenge of nuclear annihilation," said Alvarez, who heads the organizing body, describing the threat as "environmental Armaggedon".
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is the most prominent of the legislators and scientists from more than 30 Asia-Pacific nations attending the conference, which opens on Saturday, organizers said.
But they said they are expecting a particularly hard-hitting call for action from Vanuatu Prime Minister Maxime Carlot whose low-lying Pacific island nation is especially vulnerable.
"They will be the first to go under," said one conference official.
The conference is being held to prepare a draft action plan for the region to be presented at an international conference in March in Berlin.
"We also want to raise awareness among legislators in the region who must start taking responsibility for this," said the official.
Some scientists say world temperatures have been gradually increasing for hundreds of years, with rapid industrialization in the Asia-Pacific region speeding up the process.
They say eventually the polar ice caps will begin to melt, raising sea levels all over the world and swamping island nations and low-lying coastal areas, displacing millions of people.