6 - ASEAN and climate disruption

Summary

Climate change may be one issue in which bottom-up demands and initiatives could force reluctant governments to act. In any case, the problem cannot be solved unless each one of us is willing to take ownership of the problem and do our little bit to reduce our carbon footprint. Therefore, we should not allow the elusive post-Kyoto agreement to stop us from doing the right thing. The future of the Earth and of human civilization depends upon each of us.

Ambassador and Professor Tommy Koh

Climate disruption will complicate ASEAN's efforts to build sustainable development across all its member states. The impacts will either be a force for strengthening environmental safeguards needed to cope with climate change and thus enhance legal integration through ASEAN, or the disruptions will have a disintegration effect, reducing states to reliance on their own internal systems, however lacking they may be. The case studies in Chapter 5 suggest that it will be through cooperation and greater integration that the region can best cope. Whether integration through law (ITL) will in fact advance remains to be seen. The dynamics affecting decisions about ITL in the context of responding to climate change can be examined through examining how climate change will affect natural biological resources of Southeast Asia.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the impacts of climate change for biodiversity resources in the ASEAN region are projected to be serious. Climate change will exacerbate the many factors that are already endangering biodiversity in the region. A significant number of the region's population remains in poverty, many subsisting mainly on the uninterrupted use of biological natural resources, the losses of which are increasing progressively. Climate change impacts buttress one another: climate change exacerbates poverty and accelerates biodiversity loss; poverty sequentially compels the poor to exploit the environment unsustainably. Degraded environments, in return, intensify poverty and hasten climate change. The bottom line is that if deforestation in the region continues at its current rate, Southeast Asia stands to lose up to three-quarters of its forests and up to 42 percent of its biodiversity by 2100.

How each ASEAN member state responds to the challenges of climate change will measure the success or failure of its socio-economic development. Previously agreed objectives for sustainable development must be recast in light of the changing physical conditions across Southeast Asia.