KEY POINTS:
Asia will be hit especially hard by climate change, from China and India to tiny Pacific islands, and decades of human development in the continent will be pushed into reverse, a coalition of aid and green groups reported yesterday.
With more than 60 per cent of the world's population, Asia is where the human drama of global warming will be played out, says a report from 23 of Britain's leading poverty and environmental campaigning groups, from Oxfam to Friends of the Earth.
It has social and environmental characteristics that will make it especially vulnerable, the report says.
These range from the fact that more than half of the population lives near the coast, and so is directly vulnerable to sea-level rise driven by the warming climate, to the fact that the continent is home to 87 per cent of the world's 400 million small farms, dependent on regular and reliable rainfall - which cannot be guaranteed in the future.
China may be at much greater risk from extreme weather events, such as major floods, landslides and tropical storms, while India may be threatened by a weakening of the monsoon on which so much of its agriculture depends. Many Pacific islands will be directly threatened by rising seas.
The report, Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, is the fourth in a series from the coalition, officially The Working Group on Climate and Development. Its first report in 2004 broke ground in recognising for the first time that climate change was the most serious problem facing the world's poor.
Before that environmental concerns, such as the climate, were seen as a side issue to poverty.
Yesterday's Asian study, which looks at the projected effects of global warming socially, economically and geographically, paints a dire picture.
It also discusses Asia's role as a major part of the problem.
Rapidly industrialising China is overtaking the United States as the world's biggest greenhouse gas-emitter with its vast programme of building coal-fired power stations, and India is likely to follow suit.
Indonesia is the third-biggest CO2 emitter because of its deforestation.
Only leadership by example from the rich countries of the industrialised West, which put most of the CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place, will be able to persuade the Asian giants to follow a different path, which is the report's key recommendation.
The report calls for the urgent development of a second, post-2012 phase of the Kyoto protocol, the international climate change treaty.
Representatives from nearly 200 countries will meet to discuss this next month in Bali, Indonesia.
It also gives a pointed warning about the rush to develop biofuels, in Indonesia especially, where huge areas of rainforest are being cut down to make way for oil palm plantations, to make the palm oil that is an essential feedstock for biodiesel.
It says that the "silver bullet of biofuels" could turn into a rush for fool's gold, with severe social and environmental consequences.
- Independent
