ASIA-PACIFIC countries should focus on green investments to rebalance their economies while addressing the challenge of climate change and poverty in the region, according to Asian Development Bank (ADB) president Haruhiko Kuroda.

            In his keynote speech on Tuesday at the High-Level Dialogue on Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific in Manila at the ADB headquarters, Kuroda said that through committed and coordinated action, Asia and the Pacific region can adopt a more sustainable development pathway and overcome the additional burden on poverty-reduction efforts caused by the financial and climate crisis.

            Kuroda told government leaders, policymakers and climate-change experts that investments in green technologies will “add to short-run growth,” and good investment now “may cost in the future.”

            “We must quickly improve our understanding of the variable risk that climate change brings to our environment. There is an urgent need to address climate change as well as to build climate-resilient economies,” he said.

            Kuroda said the region must find and adopt new patterns of urban development, energy production and consumption, and  use, mass transportation system, land use, waste management and forest protection and carbon sequestration.

            “The region needs energy to grow, and its share of global carbon emissions could reach 40 percent by the year 2030. At a time when investment is desperately needed to stimulate economies, we need to target those investments to green development, including clean energy, to mitigate climate change,” Kuroda said.

            Kuroda noted that last year, ADB provided nearly $1.7 billion for projects with clean-energy components, and is financing a range of projects across the region.

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ACTIVISTS garbed as “aliens” off er counsel to earthmen through their placards. The novel mass action, organized by Greenpeace Southeast Asia, was mounted outside the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Mandaluyong City, where a high-level dialogue on climate and clean energy opened on Tuesday. RHOY COBILLA

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            ADB is also pursuing ways to facilitate rapid diffusion of new, low-carbon technologies across the region, and has established an advisory panel of acclaimed climate-change experts to guide the bank’s efforts in the coming years.

            The ADB president said the use of fossil fuels must be made more efficient while there should be a search for low-carbon, renewable alternative fuel sources. He said there is a need to invest more on renewable-energy sources which include biomass, wind, geothermal, hydropower and solar power.

Energy growth is startling

According to the ADB report on climate-change programs, under a business-as-usual scenario, energy demand in developing Asia will almost double by 2030. Emissions from energy use are projected to be 107 percent higher in 2030 than they were in 2006, and the region will be responsible for 43 percent of all global energy-related emissions.

            To mitigate carbon emissions, various clean technologies exist today, said ADB vice president Ursula Schaefer-Preuss.

            The ADB, which has received financing commitments of over $100 million for a new post-2012 carbon that mainly focuses on carbon credits from ADB-financed projects, will complement the bank’s ongoing Carbon Market Initiative, which already provides financial and technical support for Clean Development Mechanism projects (CDM), Preuss explained.

            The CDM is a program under the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty agreed upon by 169 countries, including the Philippines, to reduce carbon emission from fuel consumption of cars, power plants and other industries.

            “The incentive, which aims to improve a country’s energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources will also support energy security in the region while helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change,” Preuss said.

UN chief to Asia-Pacific: Support to ‘seal the deal’

Calling the issue of climate change “the defining challenge of our time,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a challenge to Asia-Pacific leaders in the same high-level dialogue Tuesday. In a video message, he urged them to lead efforts to transform the global economy into one that is “cleaner, greener and more sustainable.”

            “Today, I want to challenge you. I want to see you in the vanguard of an unprecedented effort to retool the global economy into one that is cleaner, greener and more sustainable,” the UN chief told dialogue participants.

He added that “as leaders, you are crucially placed to ensure that government negotiators seal a deal,” Secretary-General Ban said, urging their support to harness the political will needed to reach an ambitious new agreement later this year.

            “As we look forward to Copenhagen, you must be part of the long-term solution. Seal the deal that is ambitious, fair, equitable to all,” he said.

A presciption to fight global warming

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that the cost to global economy in 2030 will be less than 3 percent if the concentration of greenhouse gases is to be stabilized at the level that would limit increase in temperature to 2 degrees Celsius to 2.4 degrees Celsius.

            IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore.

            “The impacts of climate change are now so evident. If we don’t take immediate action they will get far worse,” Pachauri told reporters here. “The poorest countries and the poorest communities in Asia and the Pacific are the most vulnerable to these effects.”

            Pachauri, who also heads the New Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute, said that “mitigation possibilities are not costly” as there are now plenty of evidence to show that moving to a low carbon renewable energy development path is a “win-win solution.”

            Pachauri earlier said the influence of human activity has been clearly established by the forecasts as reported by the IPCC Fourth Assessment which was released in 2007.

            He said climate change, without action, will not only lead to an increase in temperature but to other extremely serious impacts like more floods, more droughts, changes in precipitation levels, decline in availability of water, impacts on forests, on biodiversity, among others.