Monday, March 12, 2012

Asia needs $50.4 billion a year for 'climate proofing'

AsiaOne via AFP: The Asia-Pacific region needs to spend about US$40 billion (S$50.4b) a year to "climate proof" its economies against the impact of global warming, Asian Development Bank vice president Bindu Lohani said Monday.

Countries need to undergo "transformational change" to build resilience to climate change disasters, Lohani told the Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum in Bangkok. The event itself was cancelled last year after Thailand suffered its worst floods in half a century, which killed more than 800 people and deluged hundreds of thousands of homes.

"There are going to be more such frequent natural disasters and they will complicate the challenge of achieving sustainable development in Asia," Lohani said.

"As the region's economies become increasingly linked through commercial supply chains... the impacts of such disasters are no longer confined to the place of occurrence but have wider regional and local impacts," he said, noting that the Thai floods disrupted supply chains for Japanese automakers...

Thai military and volunteers work to repair a leak in a dike on the canal in On Nut, Bangkok. The flooding was a mere 300 meters away from Bangkok's main thoroughfare Sukhumvit, but has been contained, October 31, 2011. (VOA)

No comments: