Opinion Express View: Asia on the boil

It’s now well known that though climate change affects all parts of the world, some regions are more vulnerable than others. Asia, for example, is prone to almost all the consequences of global warming — heat waves, floods, erratic monsoons, melting glaciers and sea-level rises. A new report by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released this week has found that the continent is warming twice as fast as the global average. Asia’s vulnerability is exacerbated by its geology. The continent has the largest landmass — 44.58 million square kilometres. Temperature increases over land are greater than those over the oceans. The exceptionally high temperatures then cause oceans to warm up. That’s why the continent experienced marine heat waves last year, the WMO report points out. The surface temperatures of the Indian and Pacific Oceans touched a record high last year. Ocean temperatures around Asia have risen at 0.24 degrees Celsius per decade over the past 10 years — nearly double the global average of 0.13 degrees.

As natural disasters over the past 10 years have underlined, communities in South and Southeast Asia are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rises. The WMO report also draws attention to floods in Pakistan and Kazakhstan, heatwaves in China and Central Asian countries, typhoons in Southeast Asia and the landslide that struck Wayanad in Kerala last year. Outdoor work is important to the labour-intensive economies of most countries in the region, making people vulnerable to heat, rain and cold. Studies have also shown that though overall agricultural productivity has increased in Asia, climate change has slowed down progress. Research now indicates threats to food and water security in the world’s most populous continent. For instance, the vulnerability of rice — a key staple in the region — to droughts, increasing salinity and soil damage has been underscored by several studies, including those by the IPCC.

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Almost every Asian country has a global warming mitigation plan. Increasingly, however, it’s becoming clear that people will need to adapt to erratic weather. The WMO report underlines the need to put in place early warning systems. Such systems should help people deal with multiple hazards. For instance, intense spells of rain can trigger floods and landslides while high temperatures can spark wildfires or make them more severe. If there’s one message in the WMO report, it’s this — policymakers in Asia will need to invest in increasing people’s resilience and weatherproofing economies.