Commitments to tackle climate change should be translated into action as its threats appear to be imminent, said British Junior Foreign Minister Bill Rammell. Rammell was speaking during his visit to the Red River after attending the 9th Asia-Europe Foreign Ministers' meeting (ASEM) that wrapped up May 26 in Hanoi.
Standing by the banks of the Red River, Rammell said that the river is one of the places most vulnerable to climate change in the world.
“Just a one meter rise in the sea level in the river delta region here in Vietnam can wipe out half of the rice crop for this country – an enormous impact on so many people.”
He referred to the recent Asian Development Bank (ADB) report which showed that the poorest people in the most impoverished parts of the world are likely to be most affected by climate change.
Vietnam is among the Southeast Asian countries that, as a result of climate change, could face serious impediments to development and efforts to reduce poverty, ADB said in a report released late last month.
With its long coastlines and heavy dependence on agriculture and forestry, Southeast Asia is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, the report said, warning, "The worst is yet to come."
If the world continues with its "business-as-usual" approach, the average cost of climate change for Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam could be "equivalent to losing 6.7 percent of combined gross domestic product each year by 2100 – more than twice the global average," it added.
Already, climate change has led to extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and tropical cyclones in recent decades in the region, the report said.
It noted also that the annual mean temperature in the region's four biggest countries was projected to rise by 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100 from the 1990 level.
It said that during this period, the sea level in the region was expected to rise 70 centimeters (2.3 feet), while increasingly drier weather was likely in the next two to three decades.
These factors helped push Southeast Asia's climate bill to the top of the development agenda. About 80 percent of its 563 million people live within 100 kilometers of the coast and more than 200 million people live on less than $2 a day.
“I’ve just come from the ASEM conference where leaders of the EU and Asian countries have come together to make commitments to tackle and focus attention on climate change, but we don’t need just words, we need those words to be translated into action,” Rammell said Tuesday.
He stressed the importance of the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December, where concrete actions need to be agreed upon.
“We need your voices here in Vietnam to be heard – and this issue matters to you – and if we can do that, then I think we can ensure that people who depend on rivers like this in Vietnam can have a securer future,” Rammell said.