AsianDevBank - Migration Due to Climate Change Demands Attention

7 February 2011

Migration Due to Climate Change Demands Attention - ADB
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Governments in Asia and the Pacific need to prepare for a large increase in climate-induced migration in the coming years, says a forthcoming report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Typhoons, cyclones, floods and drought are forcing more and more people to migrate. In the past year alone, extreme weather in Malaysia, Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka has caused temporary or longer term dislocation of millions. This process is set to accelerate in coming decades as climate change leads to more extreme weather.

"No international cooperation mechanism has been set up to manage these migration flows, and protection and assistance schemes remain inadequate, poorly coordinated, and scattered," the report states. "National governments and the international community must urgently address this issue in a proactive manner."

ADB expects to issue the report, Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific, in early March as part of a broader ADB project aimed at increasing awareness of, and enhancing regional preparedness for, migration driven by changing weather patterns.

The report highlights specific risks confronting climate change "hotspots", including megacities in coastal areas of Asia. These hotspots of climate-induced migration face pressure from swelling populations as rural people seek new lives in cities. The problem is compounded by greater dislocation of people caused by flooding and tropical storms.

Climate-induced migration will affect poor and vulnerable people more than others," said Bart W. Édes, Director of ADB's Poverty Reduction, Gender, and Social Development Division. "In many places, those least capable of coping with severe weather and environmental degradation will be compelled to move with few assets to an uncertain future. Those who stay in their communities will struggle to maintain livelihoods in risk-prone settings at the mercy of nature's whims."

On the positive side, the report says that if properly managed, climate-induced migration could actually facilitate human adaptation, creating new opportunities for dislocated populations in less vulnerable environments.

The ADB project, Policy Options to Support Climate-induced Migration, is the first international initiative that aims to generate policy and financing recommendations to address climate-induced migration in Asia and the Pacific.

To obtain a copy of the draft report, contact adbpub@adb.org or +63 2 632 6643.
For further information visit www.adb.org/SocialDevelopment/climate-migration.
Join a live online discussion with experts on 9 February 2011, 15:00 Manila time at http://www.adb.org/documents/events/2011/online-discussion-changing-climate/default.asp

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Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change

Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service and Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate change and development, is delighted to present his report to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Economics of Climate Change:

• Full report
• Executive Summary and Executive Summary in other languages
• Postscript and Technical Annex to postscript
• Launch Press notice , Comments on the Review , launch presentation and speaking notes
• Supporting commissioned research
• Background to the Review
• Presentations by Sir Nicholas Stern

The Stern team has moved to the Office of Climate Change. Publications posted after the Stern Review including the series of papers printed in the World Economics Journal, are now available on the Stern team page on the Office of Climate Change website .

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań, 1-12 December 2008

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznań on Saturday 13 December with a clear commitment from governments to shift into full negotiating mode next year in order to shape an ambitious and effective international response to climate change, to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Parties agreed that the first draft of a concrete negotiating text would be available at a UNFCCC gathering in Bonn in June of 2009.

At Poznań, the finishing touches were put to the Kyoto Protocol’s Adaptation Fund, with Parties agreeing that the Fund would be a legal entity granting direct access to developing countries. Progress was also made on a number of important ongoing issues that are particularly important for developing countries, including: adaptation; finance; technology; reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD); and disaster management.

A key event at the Conference was a ministerial round table on a shared vision on long-term cooperative action on climate change. Ministers gave a resounding commitment to achieving an ambitious and comprehensive deal in Copenhagen that can be ratified by all. The next major UNFCCC gathering will take place next from 29 March to 8 April next year in Bonn, Germany.

Archive from all days including summaries of the daily press briefings

A Stimulus Package for Renewable Energy Would Benefit Economy and Climate, Says German Study

Via Renewable Energy World:

by Jane Burgermeister, European Correspondent

Berlin, Germany [RenewableEnergyWorld.com
24 November 2008

The solution to the world's two biggest crisis -- the economic and the global warming crisis -- is exactly the same: a huge government investment plan in renewable energy will not only help kick start economies, but it will also help fight global warming, according to a report by Deutsche Bank

Faced with the worst economic crisis since 1931, governments in Germany and the UK as well as the US and China are planning to use deficit spending to avert a dramatic economic slowdown.

The study by Deutsche Asset Management (DeAM), a member of the Deutsche Bank group, argues that directing any stimulus package towards the renewable energy would benefit not just the economy by boosting jobs and growth but also accelerate the creation of a booming new clean tech industry, so helping to slash greenhouse gases.

Massive investment in renewable energy would also have the advantage of establishing energy independence for countries such as US, China, Germany and the UK from oil and gas imports from crisis-hit regions.

"The current crisis is making the necessity of tackling climate change an opportunity to stimulate growth through investment opportunities," said Mark Fulton, DeAM's Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research.

Investments in new improved energy efficiency technologies are especially likely to benefit recession-hit economies by reducing the burden of high fuel costs, the study argues.

Additional measures to stimulate investment in "green" infrastructure and industry, such as smart electricity grids, solar thermal and geothermal power plants, could pay dividends by creating jobs in long-term growth industries.

Investment in renewable energy would also help accelerate "grid parity," the point when electricity generated by solar, wind and other sources becomes cost competitive with power from conventional fossil fuels.

Though wind power in some locations is already cost competitive, government investment in renewable energy as part of a stimulus package would provide much needed funds to bring down the cost of all types of renewable energy.

Also, the Deutsche Bank experts are urging governments to change laws to help steer private investment into the clean energy.

Moreover, a recent report by Greenpeace in Germany and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) argues that investment in renewable energy would not represent an additional cost, but would pay for itself out of savings to be made on oil, coal and gas expenditures.

Furthermore, investment in clean energy would reduce the huge bill that the world is likely to have to face from damage caused by global warming in the future, which could be as high as 20 percent of the world's GDP a year, according to Greenpeace.

Sigmar Gabriel, Germany's Environment Minister, recently affirmed the government's commitment to the renewable energy sector, saying that 500,000 new jobs could be generated in the green sector by 2020 in Germany.

In spite of the government's pledge to support the green energy sector, few additional funds, however, were made available in this month's stimulus package from Berlin, which amounted to €50 billion [US $63.1 billion].

To succeed in the new energy revolution, analysts say the German government will have to reverse years of low investment in new renewable energy technology and energy efficiency research.

For example, the Technical University of Munich, one of Germany's leading universities with 22,000 students and 6,500 employees, spends only €10-15 million [US $12.6 to 19 million] out of a total budget of €769 million [US $971 million] on renewable energy research, which is furthermore, splintered over several institutes.

The German government's role in financing renewable energy projects is set to become all the more critical as banks are less likely to lend funds in the financial crisis.

The economic uncertainty is already clouding a series of renewable energy projects in Germany.

Doubts have grown over the Blackstone-financed project announced in July this year to build an offshore wind park of 80 wind turbines generating 400 megawatts (MW) of electricity off Helgoland by 2012, according to the German newspaper Handelsblatt. RenewableEnergyWorld.com's Eize de Vries alluded to that project last week in his story, 5-MW BARD Near-shore Wind Turbine Erected in Germany.

Capital from the private sector will be needed if the German government is to meet its ambitious target of building 10,000 MW of offshore wind power by 2020.

Building wind parks 20, 30 or even 40 kilometers off the north German coast and anchoring turbines 20 to 30 meters below the sea surface will require substantially more money than constructing equivalent wind parks on land. Without additional government funding, experts think the country's wind power plans could now have to be scaled back.

More crucially, Germany could fall behind in the race to create a thriving, strong new clean tech economy and an export world leader by the government's failure to include green energy funds in its stimulus package to revive the economy this month.

"Major investment in renewable power and energy efficiency could create an industry a 360 billion-dollar industry, provide half of the world's electricity, and reduce the hefty 18 trillion-dollar bill expected to for future fossil fuel costs, according to Oliver Schäfer from the EREC.

"Currently, the renewable energy market is worth US $70 billion and doubling in size every three years," he said. "The global market for renewable energy can grow at double digit rates until 2050, and overtake the size of today's fossil fuel industry.

Governments that include green energy incentives into their stimulus package will not only create jobs, stabilize the economy and protect the environment, but they will also help ensure that their country is well placed to come out of the recession as a world leader in green technology, which is set to dominate the energy market of the future.

With countries such as Germany and the UK so far having failed to seize the opportunities hidden in the current economic crisis, all eyes are on the US to see whether the new Obama administration grasps the chance to invest in green energy to revive the recession-hit economy and catapult America to the front of the world energy leaders.

Thinning glaciers 'endangering South Asian water supply

24 November 200

[NEW DELHI] New evidence that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking has added weight to concerns that there could be severe water shortages in the region by 2030.

Researchers drilling an ice core in the 6,050 metre-high Naimona'nyi glacier near Tibet were expecting to find radioactivity left by atomic tests carried out 50 years ago. Instead they found little more than background levels of radioactivity.

The scientists, from the Institute for Tibetan Plateau Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the US-based Ohio State University, say that this is a sign that the glacier is thinning, with no accumulation of new ice since 1944.

Seasonal runoff from glaciers such as Naimona'nyi feeds the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers in that part of the Asian subcontinent. The rivers are already severely depleted in places for months each year, say the researchers, writing in Geophysical Research Letters this month (November). The lack of new ice accumulating on the glaciers can only decrease river levels, they add.

Current models predicting river flow in the region have taken recent glacial retreat into account, say the researchers. But they have not considered that some glaciers are also thinning.

"If the thinning isn't included, then whatever strategies people adopt in their efforts to adapt to reductions in river flow simply won't work," says Natalie Kehrwald, a doctoral student at Ohio State University and lead author on the paper.

The news comes in the same month that a major report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) highlighted the role of 'atmospheric brown clouds' in melting the Hindu Kush-Himalaya-Tibetan glaciers, amongst other effects.

The vast brown clouds, caused by the burning of fossil fuels and biomass, are now thought to be warming these elevated regions with a strength equal to that of greenhouse gases, says the report. The clouds could also be depositing black carbon on the snow and ice, causing them to absorb, rather than reflect, solar radiation — and thus warm up.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates that glaciers in the region have shrunk by five per cent since the 1950s.

Link to abstract in Geophysical Research Letters

Link to UNEP report

Israel and Korea to Boost Environmental Cooperation

Via Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection:

Israel Environmental Protection Minister Gideon Ezra and his Korean counterpart Environment Minister Lee Maanee signed a memorandum of understanding on bilateral environmental cooperation on November 12, 2008.

Under the agreement, the two countries will enhance cooperation on air pollution, climate change, biological diversity and sewage disposal and will promote exchanges between environmental experts.

Among the subjects discussed by the two ministries during Minister Lee Maanee’s visit to Israel were renewable energies and efficient use of water resources. The ministers called on professionals in their respective ministries to review possibilities for joint projects and continue coordination in international environmental forums.