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1999/2000 Projects | ||
APN Global Change Symposium "The Challenges of Global Environmental Change for the Asia-Pacific Region: A Scientific Assessment"
The first APN Global Change Symposium, supported by Hyogo Prefectural Government, was held at the Kobe International Conference Center, on 20 October 1999. Approximately 350 people attended including local citizens, business representatives and scientists, as well as international participants from the global change research community. Extensive media coverage was given by regional newspapers, radio and television. The Symposium was divided into four sessions, and a short summary of each is given below. Session 1 Opening Following a short welcome by Mr. Hiroaki Takagi, Director of the APN Secretariat, Mr. Toshitami Kaihara, Governor of Hyogo Prefecture made a welcoming address on behalf of the local hosts. Mr. Hironori Hamanaka then made a welcome speech on behalf of the Environment Agency of Japan. Professor Keiji Higuchi provided the first talk, with an introduction to the work of the APN and the issue of global change. Session 2 From Global to Local The remainder of the morning session examined the major global change issues from the global, regional and local perspectives. Dr. Jill Jaeger, Executive Director of IHDP, outlined her view of the challenges presented by global change to mankind and the types of research necessary to address those challenges. A regional perspective was given by Dr. Prodipto Ghosh of the ADB who focused on issues related to greenhouse gas emissions in Asia. Finally, Prof. Akihiro Amano gave an overview of the Japanese Government's approach to global change research. Session 3 Causes and Impacts of Global Change: Case Studies In the afternoon session, the four main presentations focused on some of the major issues within the region. Dr. Daniel Murdiyarso gave a perceptive talk on the effect of changes in land use on greenhouse gas emissions in Southeast Asia, and the possibilities for human intervention. The changing atmosphere of South Asia was introduced by Professor A.P. Mitra. .Professor Patrick Nunn used some stunning slides to illustrate the changing world of the insular Pacific, focusing on reefs, beaches and islands. Finally, Professor Congbin Fu graphically illustrated the impacts of climate variability on life in Asia. Session 4 Conclusions Professor Roland Fuchs, acting as rapporteur, emphasised that the day's talks had demonstrated how global change concerns more than just climate change. Land use and land cover change; changes in atmospheric composition; changes in chemical cycles; climate variability; change and degradation of coastal areas - all these are just some of the components of global change. Such change is not necessarily slow and we may be faced by sudden and catastrophic changes in the future. To learn to understand and respond to such changes the global scientific and political communities face a difficult challenge, one that will be greatly assisted by Hyogo Prefecture's bold initiative in hosting the APN. A lively question and answer session followed, with all the day's speakers
responding to points made by the audience.
A full set of abstracts for the major presentations is attached.
Session 1 - Introduction Presenter: Keiji Higuchi, Co-Chair, APN Scientific Planning Group Three key phrases are necessary to grasp the nature of the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN). The first is "governmental", the second is "regional" (in this case the Asia-Pacific region) and the third is "science-policy links" which means that APN works as a governmental organisation between the science and policy communities. Research on global environmental change was originated, and is conducted today, by the scientific community through organisations such as the IGBP, IHDP and WCRP, and coordinated by START. However, as awareness of the importance of global change grew, it was recognised that governments should also take a strong interest in this research. As a result today there are three regional intergovernmental organizations which promote global environmental research, between them covering most of the earth. In the Americas there is the IAI, in Europe and Africa ENRICH and in Asia and the Pacific the inter-governmental network is the APN which currently has 20 member countries. So as you can see, APN is a "governmental" organisation. Why is it necessary to emphasize "regional"? Although we are talking about global changes, such as global warming, there is a great deal of regional variation in the processes and impacts. Some areas are more intensely influenced by such environmental change than others. These areas are called "vulnerable". It is important to identify these vulnerable areas and to think about responses. This point is reinforced by the recent IPCC report which stressed the importance of "regional impact" and "assessment of vulnerability". In other words, it is crucial to think about the differences among regions and to consider what measures are required. That is why it is necessary to emphasise the regional aspects of global environmental change. Although scientists examine the change of global systems and their impacts, their research findings must be incorporated into policies in order to make public use of the findings. Therefore "science-policy links" is the APN's second function. To ensure that scientific findings are incorporated into government policies it is vital to construct good connections between scientists and administrators or policy-makers. In fact this is a major feature of APN which makes it different from other regional academic organizations such as START. Since APN is a governmental organization it is in a strong position to influence policy-making. In addition, it is essential to educate and influence citizens. Indeed,
it is said that there are three leading parts on the stage of global environmental
problems. First are the scientists who study the problems, second are policy-makers
in administration, and a very big third is the general public. For instance,
the lifestyles of the public itself can contribute to global warming and
to prevent it we need to alter our lifestyles. For the prevention of global
environmental problems cooperation between the academic and administrative
sectors is very important, but in fact all three parts need to cooperate.
The scientific community must achieve good research results, the administrators
must implement suitable measures, and the general public must understands
and change their behaviour accordingly. The global environment will only
be protected through such cooperation among all three players. In this
way open symposiums like today's are crucial to help the general public
understand the points at issue in global environmental change.
Session 2 - From Global to Local Presentation 1: The Global Perspective
Global Environmental Change is as old as planet earth. Physical, chemical
and biological processes have been shaping and reshaping the earth's environment
since its infancy 4.5 billion years ago. In recent time, however, humankind
has been one of the major driving forces of environmental change on our
planet, including climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity,
pollution and desertification. In turn, individuals and societies are also
experiencing the impact of the changes in their natural environment upon
their own daily social, economic and political situations. These impacts
may include water and food shortages, natural disasters, health risks,
conflicts about resources and massive migration from areas most severely
affected by environmental change.
Two important challenges to global environmental change
are the questions of scale and data. Environmental change occurs on the
local, regional and global scales and the ability to link research on these
scales is crucial. The need for comparable data and the integration of
natural science and social science data remain major challenges.
Session 2 - From Global to Local Presentation 2: The Regional Perspective
The earth's fragile atmosphere is changing with the continuing accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) around the world. The most important among these in terms of past and present contribution to climate change are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. To attempt to address and remedy the situation, the countries of the world adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The ALGAS (Asia Least-cost Greenhouse Gas Abatement Strategy) Project is a major technical assistance project for 12 Asian nations to meet their commiments under the UNFCCC, executed by ADB. In just three years of intensive operations, the ALGAS Project has met or exceeded its objectives. The Project has enabled the participating countries to begin the process of conserving their carbon sinks and abating the growth of GHGs emissions while continuing to meet national development objectives. The ALGAS Project is thus assisting the Asian countries' move toward sustainable development. In undertaking the activities of the ALGAS Project, the participating countries have significantly raised their understanding of the issues and options relating to climate change. The scientific training provided by the Project has enabled Asian experts to contribute to the IPCC 1995 global scientific assessment. Findings of the ALGAS Project have also led directly to improvements and modifications in the IPCC GHGs inventory methodology. The organizational structure of the ALGAS Project has fostered the establishment of National Implementing Committees (NICs) consisting of cross-sectoral representation of relevant government agencies, non-governmental organizations, academia and the private sector. Through the NICs, the ALGAS Project effectively raised the awareness of key decision makers on climate change issues and developed ownership of proposed GHG abatement strategies. The National Counterpart Agencies (NCAs) helped the ALGAS Project identify key National Technical Experts (NTEs) to carry out the ALGAS National workplans. In this process, the Project enhanced the national capacity to carry out such climate change activities beyond the life of the ALGAS Project. The tangible results of the ALGAS Project are: (i) national inventories
of GHGs sources and sinks for 1990 and projections for 2020; (ii) least-cost
GHG abatement strategies; (iii) national GHG abatement action plans; and
(iv) a portfolio of technical assistance and GHGs abatement investment
projects prepared upto pre-feasibility. The intangible results are the
technical, organizational and institutional capacity to address national
GHGs inventories and GHGs abatement options, and the awareness raised of
the potential options and benefits associated with GHG abatement.
Session 2 - From Global to Local Presentation 3: The Local Perspective
In Japan, the Basic Law on the Environment was enacted in 1993, and the Basic Environmental Plan, the action plan for that law, was completed in 1994. In a recent survey I have investigated Japanese environmental policies since these provisions were instituted. The budget for environmental policies in Japan between 1995 and 1998 totaled 33.5 trillion yen. In other words about 10.5% of the general budget of Japan or about 1.7% of its GDP is used for environmental policies. Japan has taken great steps to combat environmental problems in the 1990s. In contrast, there is anxiety that the funds necessary for environmental policies will increase as in future environmental problems become more intense. With regard to global warming, Japanese policies in recent years have three obvious features, and each of them has advantages and disadvantages. The first obvious feature is high expenditure on conservation, which demonstrates that policies to combat environmental problems and promote environmental conservation have a high priority. At the same time, such high expenditure is in itself a drawback. The time is approaching for us to consider implementing advanced environmental conservation policies with reduced expenditure. Second is that the proportion of government conducted policy activities exceeds 80%. The expenditure preference is for public activities, especially basic and scientific research, rather than other activities. The drawback here is that Japan doesn't have a diverse range of policy instruments, even though various different approaches have been developed recently. Perhaps we should more readily adopt new approaches that have been specifically developed to solve problems that are difficult to solve by more traditional methods. The third obvious factor is the strong focus on technological advancement, through policies on basic research and R&D. Public availability of results is one very significant advantage of research work undertaken by central and local government. In contrast, however, R&D and financial subsidies for environment-friendly initiatives are not major environmental policies in other countries. This is because the private sector is usually more financially efficient than the public sector. Whether technological advancement is a preferable approach, and whether the government undertakes the work or encourages the private sector to do so, should be separate issues. In sum, Japanese global warming policies have a lot of advantages which
other developed countries in Europe and America do not have, and these
features should be retained and improved. At the same time it is desirable
to introduce new policy methods to combat new problems. The traditional
system of high regulation with limited objectives was the mainstream. However,
stricter objectives within a de-regulated process is becoming a favoured
international approach. Such an approach depends on market-based (more
flexible) policy methods, which allow all, including private companies,
the general public, and NGOs, to develop new ideas. This in turn will lead
to technological innovation. I hope we will progress in that direction.
Session 3 - Causes and Impacts of Global Change: Case Studies Presentation 1: Land-use and land-cover change and greenhouse
gas emissions: Can we interfere?
Land-use and land-cover change is an important feature in the developing world of Southeast Asia, especially in the past 20-30 years. The changes that take place in both the hinterlands and coastal zones are closely related to the development of human settlement, increasing demand for food and the development of agro-based industries to meet the demands of foreign markets. The rates and drivers of land-use change vary from country to country but very often involve large scale conversion of natural systems and alter socio-economic settings down to the community and household levels. Deforestation is a dominant activity in the region, resulting from the need to generate revenue from logging industries and to provide mono-species and extensive agricultural land such as oil-palm and timber plantation for processed wood and pulp mills. Meanwhile coastal zones, which are dominated by mangrove forests and other wetland ecosystems, are converted into shrimp farms, and to some extent human settlements. The cumulative impacts of such change at the regional scale are not precisely known. However, case studies may be used as baseline information on which decision making can be based. In the province of Jambi, Indonesia, where land-use/cover change is occurring at a massive rate and scale, on-going research activities are directed towards the integration of a number of approaches attempting to assess carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes from upland soils. Above- and below-ground carbon stocks were also assessed to create a complete picture of carbon cycles. The measurement campaign is expanded and experimental works are intensified in order to demonstrate the overall processes in spatial terms. Moreover, modelling tools are devised to give predictive capability required in decision-making processes. This is particularly important for the planning of sustainable development at national or local levels. It is demonstrated that direct impacts on the depletion of the above-ground biomass, and hence carbon stocks, was observable even from the relatively low spatial resolution of satellite imageries. The calculation of CO2 exchange was carried out for 1988-1996 and crossed checked by ground-truthing, with phenomenal results. Carbon release was demonstrated to be as much as 0.33 Gt/yr when forest conversions and deforestation were extensively practised. When fires were used for land clearing the impacts are more devastating to the local environment as well as transboundary air quality. Scientifically sound public policy-making is urgently needed for the
further policy interventions that are required during the implementation
of national development programmes. In addition international conventions
such as Climate Change and Biodiversity may be integrated to attract international
support.
Session 3 - Causes and Impacts of Global Change: Case Studies Presentation 2: Changing Atmosphere in South Asia
A major driving force for climate change comes from changing atmospheric composition, especially in the concentrations of greenhouse gases CO2, CH4 and N2O, and in aerosol loading of the atmosphere. Radiative forcings from preindustrial times are around 1.56 Wm-2 (CO2), 0.47 Wm-2 (CH4) and 0.14 Wm-2 (N2O). In addition there are radiative forcings from CFCs, ozone and aerosols. Although the total land area of South Asia is only about 3% of the world, its population was 21.3% of the global population in 1990 and is expected to rise 23.6% in 2025. We are thus dealing with 1/5th to 1/4th of the world population. For this large population greenhouse gas emissions for 1990 (base year) are remarkably low: around 2.7% for CO2 (all sources) and 7% for CH4 (all sources). For fossil fuel alone, emission from this region is 3% (around 175 tg/yr) and is expected to rise to 11-12% (690-800 tg/yr) in 2025. Per capita emission is very low: 0.05 T/capita for Bangladesh, 0.06 for Sri Lanka, 0.016 for Nepal, 0.2 for India and 0.14 for Pakistan as against 1.2 T/capita global average. An important component is biosphere-atmosphere interaction. Two biospheric sectors are important: agriculture and forestry. For the agriculture sector, appreciable emissions occur from rice fields ( 6 Tg/yr for South Asia ) and animals (10 Tg/yr). The forest sector is a net emitter - emissions in most cases exceeding uptake. In terms of CO2 equivalent values, agriculture sector emissions are 50% of energy and industry sector for India, as large as 126% for Bangladesh and 325% for Sri Lanka. Thus policy attention should be appropriately re-oriented. If one considers a priority matrix of emission sources, key areas that emerge are: coal consumption (largest contribution to CO2 emission in India), methane emissions from rice field, animals and road transport sector. Atmospheric SO2 loading from anthropogenic sources is no longer negligible for this region. Also this loading is increasing rapidly. From programmes such as INDOEX, the aerosol model for tropical Indian Ocean during Northeast Monsoon shows large contributions to optical depth from soot (11%) and organics (20%). INDOEX observed an extensive thick aerosol haze tropical covering an area of 10 million square kilometers over the Indian Ocean. The cloud contains a large fraction of black carbon and organic carbon, coming from incomplete combustion of fossil fuel and biomass. The ozone problem is quite different in this region. Firstly, columnar ozone is low with very little change in the last two decades. But tropospheric ozone has increased appreciably with as yet undetermined impact on health and agriculture. Atmospheric change from biomass burning is another serious concern.
Forest degradation has been particularly serious. For Sri Lanka the
forest cover decreased from 70% in 1990 to 22% in 1985. Traditional biomass
burning in rural households (using fuel wood, cowdung, charcoal etc. )
produce 300-500 Tg of CO2 (comparable to fossil fuel) , 12
-18 Tg of CO ,200 Gg of elemental carbon and 1100 Gg of organic carbon.
Session 3 - Causes and Impacts of Global Change: Case Studies Presentation 3: Reefs, Beaches and Islands: The Changing World
of the Insular Pacific
The traditional understanding and management of the environment in the Pacific Islands reflects the fact that for most of the past three thousand years people have survived with more than adequate land and food resources. The twentieth century has brought new challenges, with increasing population levels and changing demands on the land. These internal problems now look to be compounded by extraneous problems such as climate change and sea-level rise. Pacific Islands environments are very diverse, ranging from high volcanic islands through limestone islands and low coral-reef islands or atolls. These islands have been in continuous change ever since they were formed, but previously low population densities allowed islanders to simply relocate in the face of local environmental crises. Rising population, changing demands on the environment and new and restrictive systems of land tenure have removed this response option. The three major causes of environmental change in the twentieth century have been temperature rise, tropical cyclone increase and sea-level rise. The direct effects of temperature rise are difficult to isolate, but indirectly it has led to an increase in tropical cyclones and sea-level rise. The former have eroded beaches, in some cases permanently, and have caused increased flooding and landsliding which have adversely affected infrastructure such as bridges. Sea-level has risen by perhaps 25-30 centimetres in the last 200 years, leading to beach erosion and the retreat or relocation of coastal settlements on low islands. The protection of local environments in the Pacific is often carried out by local communities, and the most common initiatives are shoreline-protection structures such as seawalls. Research suggests that around 95% of these seawalls are useless, a tragedy for poor communities that have raised the money to build them in the first place. Future environmental change in the Pacific is uncertain, we know that temperature and sea-level may rise, but not whether the changes will be sudden or gradual. However, it seems likely that the reefs, beaches and islands of the Pacific will change. Coral bleaching is likely to multiply, beaches will continue to disappear and increasing population will lead to further degradation of island land. The environment of the Pacific Islands seems sure to be transformed
during the next century. Although the Islands are resouce-poor, there is
hope, through international treaties and environmental management assistance
from countries such as Japan. Without such assistance the future of the
Pacific Islands looks bleak.
Session 3 - Causes and Impacts of Global Change: Case Studies Presentation 4: Climate variation and life in Asia (A
general review)
The climate in Asia is mainly characterized by a well-developed monsoon system which has high variability on both interannual and interdecadal scales and produces high frequency of climate-related disasters and thus has profound impact on life in Asia. Asia is also characterized by strong anthropogenic forcing, mainly related to emission of greenhouse gases and aerosols, land use and cover change and urbanization, on climate change. Among other regional features of climate in Asia, this review focuses
mainly on two issues:
Taking the 1997-98 ENSO event as an example, the strongest in the last century, the social and economic impact on Asia was assessed, such as the severe flood disaster in the Yangtze valley of China and the severe droughts in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Statistical evidence of ENSO impacts in Asia by other ENSO events was also presented. The review presented some update information on global warming by showing the mean surface temperature curve of last Millennium. It indicates that the 20th century is the warmest one in the last 1000 years and the 1990's is the warmest decade of this century. Under the global warming pressure, Asia has experienced some unusual climate such as the persistent hot summer and warmer winter. The impact of such climate on the water supply, aridification and desertification in some areas of Asia was presented. There is also evidence from some numerical experiments showing that the extremes of climate in Asia, for example, the frequency of extreme flood in Yangtze valley would probably be higher under global warming. The review also presented some personal views on the predictability of climate by presenting some case experiments on ENSO forecasting and some projections on future climate under CO2 forcing. The uncertainties of our current understanding of the climate system and particularly the difficulties of accurate projection of regional climate change were discussed. To address this problem, a START-APN project on the development of regional climate model and its application for Asia, as an example, was introduced briefly. The main conclusions are: (1) Climate variation on interannual scale, particularly those related to ENSO, have significant effects on life in Asia; (2) There are also potential regional consequences in Asia in response to global warming on the decadal scale; (3) Better use of climate information for social and economic management is necessary for sustainable development in Asia. |