Friday, March 21, 2014

Leaked UN climate change report paints grim picture of Philippines, rest of Asia

Eco-Business: Millions of people in vulnerable areas, such as some parts of Asia, will have to deal with a worrying scenario of conflicts, food crises, flooding, droughts and huge economic losses caused by climate change by the end of the century, according to the leaked draft of a forthcoming international climate report.

The latest report of the United Nations panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), looked at the growing threat of climate change and on how human and natural systems are expected to address the “ widespread and consequential” impacts.

The leaked document, which is yet to be finalized by hundreds of international scientists and is scheduled to be release by end of March 2014, is the second of the three reports of the IPCC’s scientific assessment on climate change.

The report also finds other alarming and devastating impacts from climate change revealing that hundreds of millions of people, mostly in Asia, will be forced to move due to coastal flooding and land loss as sea level rise.

By the middle of this century, Asia’s urban population will increase by 1.4 billion and will account for over 50 per cent of the global population, according to the IPCC report. Asia, which includes the Philippines, experienced the highest number of weather-and climate-related disasters in the world during the period from 2000-2008 and suffered huge economic losses, accounting for the second highest proportion (27.5 per cent) of the total global economic loss....

A street scene in Manila, shot by Ville Miettinen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

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