JAKARTA: Southeast Asian countries need to implement the mechanisms stipulated in the Paris Agreement to mitigate the impact of disasters caused by climate change, as the region is one of the most vulnerable to such impacts, experts said on Monday.
ASEAN must participate in realizing the global goals in avoiding the worst climate impact as the Asia Pacific region, which includes ASEAN, is “one of the most vulnerable regions, in a vulnerable world”, Ross Garnaut, professional research fellow in economics at the University of Melbourne, said.
Speaking of the impact of climate change, Garnaut cited the example of a 1-meter rise in sea levels, which would most affect the region since its cities are built so close to current sea levels, including Jakarta.
On this, the professor underlined the extreme vulnerability of the cities in the region.
“It would not take much to destabilize,” he said during the conference marking the 33rd anniversary of The Jakarta Post, in which the pressing challenges faced by ASEAN, including climate change, were discussed.
Garnaut called for ASEAN countries to implement the Paris Agreement, which he commended as a “huge political achievement”.
“There’s a general goal and each country is free to develop its own program of progress towards that goal. There will be peer review opportunities to compare progress across countries and also to apply pressure on countries,” Garnaut said.
The set of agreements, which came as a result of the Paris Climate Conference ( COP21 ) in December last year, aims to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
The use of environmentally friendly technologies would also be beneficial especially as the costs had gone down significantly in recent years to encourage the process of change, Garnaut added.
Also included in the Paris agreement is a net-zero emissions goal, which is aimed to be reached in the second half of the century.
In tackling this, Soogil Young, former chair of the presidential committee on green growth of the Republic of Korea, recommended that APEC participate in the pricing of carbons.
The countries in the region could also follow the nationally determined contributions ( NDC ) to achieve green growth at home, he added.
Indonesia, as one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, pledged an ambitious new target last year for reducing carbon emissions and slashing greenhouse gas output by 29 percent by 2030.
In the submission to the UN climate conference in Paris, the government set aside 12.7 million hectares of forest for conservation to help realize its target. The government also hoped to derive nearly a quarter of its vast energy needs from renewable sources within a decade.
Indonesia is among the world’s biggest CO2 polluters because of severe deforestation and especially because of huge forest and peatland fires last year in some parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan.
