For decades, Asian leaders largely ignored climate change. It's a Western problem, we said. They caused the problem by dumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere; let them clean it up. Instead, we Asian leaders focused on reducing poverty by growing our economies.
We were not responsible for the pollution, we argued; so we should not have to pay for it. Yes, Asia’s industrialisation was quietly building up toxic stores of carbon, but we were only following the rich world’s prescription for success. Carbon equals growth, it said; and, like those who took up smoking on the doctor’s orders, we were not to blame.
There was a time when the assumptions underpinning this line of thinking were true. Not anymore.
Climate change has become malignant. It threatens to blunt Asia's growth and upend our development. Climate scientists are increasingly certain that catastrophic weather events — such as the 2011 floods in Thailand, one of history's costliest disasters, or last year's Typhoon Haiyan, which killed and displaced thousands of people in the Philippines — will become more frequent and intense.
From small island states to delta settlements, Asia is the climate frontline. Seven of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change are in Asia and the Pacific. Millions of Asians are at risk. It falls to Asian governments, whose primary responsibility is to protect their citizens, to respond.
For decades, we left it to the West to solve the problem. And for decades they failed to do so. If Asian countries don't help push things forward, the United Nations climate summit in Paris next year — where world governments are due to sign a crucial agreement to curb emissions — could fail.
For the complete artciel, please see Bangkok Post.
To fight illegal coca plantations and conflict actors’ income sources, Colombia’s president wants to loosen the ban on aerial glyphosate spraying. However, considering the dynamics of organised crime, the use of toxic herbicides will not only fail to achieve its aim, it will have many adverse effects for the environment and human health, fundamentally undermining ways to reach peace in the country. International cooperation and national policy-makers need to account for this peace spoiler.
As India grapples with the worsening impacts of climate change, the need to strengthen its adaptation efforts has become more significant than ever. Climate diplomacy and mainstreaming climate adaptation into the most vulnerable sectors could provide some solutions to overcoming barriers, such as the lack of sustainable funding.
“Climate Security risks will materialise in very different ways and forms, whether we talk about Lake Chad or about the Arctic, Bangladesh and the Small Island Developing States,” said the EU’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, Joao Vale de Almeida, in his opening remarks. “But for the EU, there is no doubt, as underlined in 2016 in our Global Strategy, and reaffirmed by the 28 Ministers of Foreign Affairs, that climate change is a major threat to the security of the EU and to global peace and security more generally,” he said.
The challenges facing the international community are growing while the willingness to cooperate seems to be waning. Foreign policy must help bridge this gap. One way to accomplish this is by pushing forward a major achievement of multilateralism: the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. At a side event during the 2019 High-Level Political Forum, diplomats and policy experts discussed the role of foreign policy in the global sustainability architecture.