Global warming in Asia

The Nation, Asia News Network, Bangkok

The heat is literally on, and climate change could wreak havoc with basic subsistence patterns across the continent

One cannot fail to notice a change in the weather pattern. For Thailand, a hotter climate has persisted over the past several years. The rainy season has become less consistent. This year, for instance, the rainy months were clearly shorter.

From South Asia to China to Indonesia most of the population lives off the land, many on a subsistence basis. Countries like Thailand may be industrializing and branching out to become service-based economies; as a society we may debate incentives for promoting investments; but at the end of the day the livelihood of the majority of people remains closely linked to the weather, to the soil, to water and those environmental conditions that hold the country's social, economic and political life together.

At the end of last week the visiting head of the UK Meteorological Office's Hedley Centre for Climate Prediction, David Griggs, met up with the Asian Business Council in Singapore with what sounded like a prophecy of doom. The Asian region is becoming hotter, more prone to drought in inland areas and at greater risk from typhoons.

He told the Financial Times that global warming, much of it induced by Asia's own industrialization and carbon-dioxide emissions, was likely to have a big impact on agriculture, industry and the insurance sector and also on the lives of the poor, if sea level rose by one metre.

So environmental degradation and global warming are not the West's exclusive concern, after all. Shining the spotlight on the potential impact on Asia is very welcome despite the incomplete data. And governments and people in Asia must heed Griggs's warning: "If you're a major food-producer, or you rely on water, virtually every industry will be affected in some way. What we're still trying to understand is exactly how.

Only a handful of Asian industrialists are taking this alarming news seriously. Among them is Esquel, a Hong Kong-based textile group with 47,000 workers, whose chairwoman, Marjorie Yang, spoke at an international conference organized by The Nation in Bangkok earlier this year, and Godrej & Boyce, a leading Indian refrigerator-manufacturer.

Some multinationals also want to lead the way, including Lafarge, the French building-materials group, and Holcim, the Swiss-based building-materials company affiliated with Siam City Cement Co.

While Asia can benefit from more "environmental-activist" companies, Asian governments have every interest in taking greater initiatives on rules and regulations. The Thai government in particular should step back from its almost religious belief in ruthlessly exploiting available natural resources, an obsession that we have seen throughout the past four years under the Thaksin administration.

As the congress of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) draws to a close this week in Bangkok, its members should resolve to put two central messages across: "Time is running out" and "the time for action is now".

A whole range of complicated and interconnected challenges lies ahead, but the single most important step that responsible governments, corporate citizens and people all over the world must take is to change entrenched mind sets that politicize everything while doing almost nothing to avert impending, potentially disastrous threats to mankind.