Climate change poses extreme risks to the Asia Pacific region that will endanger the lives and livelihoods of low-income people and people living in poverty. In 2015 in Paris, 194 countries made a commitment that they would drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But while most nations in the Asia Pacific region have signed and ratified the Paris Agreement, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Taking into account historical emissions, the remaining global emissions budget to limit warming to below 1.5 ̊C is 630 Gt CO21. According to the International Energy Agency, however, just factoring in thermal coal power stations currently under construction, India and China alone will reach 169 Gt CO2 by 2050. If all planned thermal coal power stations go ahead, this figure reaches a staggering 196Gt CO2 by 2050.
Action to curb greenhouse gas emissions by replacing dirty energy with renewable alternatives has never been more important for the safety of people in the Asia Pacific region.
The Asian Development Bank purports to recognize this. Their own policy documents explicitly outline the devastating impact climate change will have on Asian peoples. They present that economic growth is not sustainable unless it is environmentally sustainable, and that environmental degradation and climate change present fundamental challenges to their vision of eliminating poverty in the Asia Pacific by 2020.
Friends of the Earth Asia Pacific calls for the Asian Development Bank to cease all support for new coal projects, and to hasten the transition to sustainable renewable energy across Asia. We also believe the ADB must use its influence to lobby other multilateral lending institutions urgently to do the same.