Asia Pacific People for Environment and Community
Putting People into APEC!

Conference
Saturday September 1, 2007
Guthrie Theatre, Design Building, UTS
Harris St, Ultimo (next to ABC Building and footbridge)

Second Panel Session

Transcript_pdf

Abigail Jabines

Greenpeace Philippines

“Climate Change, crisis or an opportunity for APEC nations”

Good afternoon everybody, I hope, I am sorry if I am late, it was a long trip for me although I am going to be part of the APEC team of Greenpeace this was short notice. I think the speaker would like to extend her apologies, she is not feeling well so she can’t come today. Anyway I am going to proceed with the discussion. Climate change, it is an issue that has been cropping up everywhere from newspapers, television, even children know about global warming it’s included in the curriculum and there’s a big discussion if it’s actually a crisis or an opportunity for APEC nations.  

The tipping point.  Last April 2007 the inter-governmental panel on climate change, releases for assessment report and one important thing after long discussion, it was more than two week discussion on the day they are supposed to release, one of the important thing is that they strengthened the data on the climate change tipping point. This is when worst impacts would happen and to the point that it is irreversible and developing countries are not able to cope anymore. It’s actually two degrees centigrade. Unfortunately millions are at risk, especially developing countries in Africa, Asia and The Pacific and that includes my country, The Philippines. 

A few years ago when I started volunteering for Greenpeace one of the things that made my decision to volunteer more is that I can do something and that is not unique. But then you hear all these news millions are at risk, my country is at risk, can I do something about it, how vulnerable am I.

Increase in the severity of typhoons and rainfall. These are actual images that happened in my country and other Asian countries that have been documented and one vital thing is that scientists are saying that climate change is still unsettled,  it is not on its worst yet and these are the things that we are experiencing. This is the aftermath of the second world deadliest disaster last year the typhoon XXXX(remilangaspi)  and the other one is also last year in Thailand. You can see that typhoons and rainfall can actually damage the property, displace families.  It can also create landslides and flooding and what’s important is that IPCC (?) is saying it is going to be more severe. Rainfall patterns are going to be variable. The variability of rainfall is going to increase and it is not going to help to prepare communities and they are not aware of their vulnerability. Another is drought and heatwaves, extreme weather events in general. For the past thirty years the globe has been experiencing an increase in drought. Problem drought and heatwaves. This image was 2005 in Thailand a year before the image that you saw a while ago, the flooding. So that’s the transition that they have instead of communities being able to cope with the impacts in a fair amount of time now they have a shorter period to cope.

Another image, drought is not just a scarcity of water. I would like to remind you, it also affects communities in terms of resources; food, water security. It also degrades land. It also has an affect on national growth. Last year extreme weather events like typhoons actually decreased by 12.4% ? our GDP, The Philippines GDP. And now they are seeing a prolonged drought in my country will eventually have an affect as well.

Spreading of deserts. First up it’s not as critical probably for example in The Philippines, we don’t have a desert but in areas such as mainland Asia there has been a notice of increasing area of desert, the certification and this means species lost because from grasslands these areas become desert and those communities and species, the ecosystems that’s dependant on that climate is actually harmed or vulnerable. Areas and communities need to adapt to situations such as erosion and sandstorms. Although they have been experiencing it before - similar extreme weather events, scientists are also saying that if we do business as usual, meaning if we continue the rate of greenhouse gas emissions that we release it contributes to climate change, still these impacts are going to be more severe and more frequent. I think this is going to be more familiar to some.

Coral reefs. Most Asian countries, Pacific countries, have vast coral cover. The Philippines has the second, Australia has one of the most diverse; The Great Barrier. And coral bleaching because of the increase in temperature due to global warming and climate change can actually turn underwater paradise to underwater ghost towns. This was during the 1998 El Nino, this was a picture taken from the Great Barrier Reef. It didn’t happen just there, it actually also happened in The Philippines where massive coral bleaching occurred in XX XX XX (Filipino place names???) These are actual marine, world known marine sanctuaries that have been affected. And they are not just valued for their ecosystem or their conservation efforts, also for tourism.

Next slide. A few months ago we used GIS; Geographic Information System to map out areas in The Philippines that are vulnerable to sea level rise. It’s also one of the impacts of climate change because when glaciers melt, although we don’t have snow, we only have two seasons, that’s dry and wet or rainy eventually it will be affected by melting of the glaciers or polar ice caps. Because we’re an archipelagic country, The Philippines actually has a coastline that’s almost equal to the circumference of the Earth with 7000 plus islands. If you look at Indonesia its even bigger and other countries as well. One metre rise in sea level , what’s going to be affected; 700 million square metres of land, 15 out of 16 regions has a coastline, only one the XXXX administrative region doesn’t have any coastline, that’s the only on that’s not affected by sea level rise. Unfortunately it’s very, very prone to typhoons and landslides so if extreme weather events happen it will still be affected. But sea level rise is not just water covering land. It’s not just inundation, it’s ecosystems lost, mangroves, beaches, the livelihood of fishing communities will also be affected. It also increases the salinity of ground water and aquaxxx (??) plus it aggravates present environmental concerns such as subsidence which is a very big consideration right now in The Philippines because of the amount of water we are drawing up from our aquaXXX???? Subsidence is a very big issue, then sea level rise will add to that problem.

What are the costs? Who’s the culprit? Actually each of us are. Everybody. Whether you’re a big country or a small country. Whether you’re a developed nation or a still developing nation. Everybody is a contributor. But I think aside from acknowledging that we are contributors and what are the causes, later maybe you can think about what can we do.

What are the causes of climate change. One of the big contributors of greenhouse gas emissions is our energy use. For the longest period industrialised nations have embraced coal, fossil fuel, natural gas, oil and this has released millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and other greenhouse gases. Now these nations, some of these nations are actually veering away from fossil fuels, Asia and other developing nations are actually embracing it. Which is very ironic because we are most vulnerable, because we are embracing the actual culprit. This is a picture of the XX coal power station in XXX 2400 megawatts. This man is actually from that community. The problem of coal is not just greenhouse gas emissions. It also contributes to respiratory ailments because of the particular matter is releases. It also releases toxic concoctions and heavy metals and all of   these are being carried by host communities. And these are always in marginalised places. Other causes are deforestation, forest fires, waste management and transportation so each of us are contributors.

The next big question; how do we solve it, can I do something about it. But then if you ask the wrong question you also get the wrong answer so you better make sure that APEC actually asks the right questions at these meetings. You remember the tipping point? A few weeks ago when we learned that APEC is actually going to discuss the issue of climate change we were very hopeful but then we had the draft of the declaration that they want to release and it actually shows that they are actually veering away from actual solutions. They are actually looking for false solutions and temporary statements, rhetoric, lip service. We must reduce the global mean average temperature to less than two degrees centigrade therefore we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by changing our mindset and if one of the main contributors is energy therefore we need to have an energy revolution, a shift.

Exploring renewable energy sources such as wind, solar power and other sources of alternative energy that are actually sustainable because by then we don’t only address climate change we also address energy security and independence. We can also reduce energy demand through energy efficiency and I think developing countries can go a long way with this process. With an energy revolution we avert the worst impacts of climate change, we ensure energy security and independence. And there are actual savings and fuel costs that can be allotted to other services such as education, health, housing, services that are actually supposed to be provided by governments.

So APEC actually has a choice. APEC has a choice if it wants to be irrelevant in the discussion or to be a leader and I hope that in our own way we can encourage nations, our leaders to act as leaders and actually act now. Because yes climate change is real and yes sometimes we think that ok the world is in doom, we can’t do anything about it, but actually we can but then the window for action is getting very slim and the time to act is now and I hope with this meeting I will not be disappointed. There is a chance that this is a reality but I hope that the APEC nations actually impose Kyoto and be sincere in answering climate change and not just pure rhetoric. Thank you very much.