Southeast Asia will be highly vulnerable if no action is taken to address climate change, according to a study by the Asian Development Bank.
Economic losses under the “business-as-usual” emissions scenario could be 60% higher than previously estimated, and this could reduce the region’s gross domestic product by up to 11% a year by 2100, the ADB said, Yahoo reported.
The warning is in an analysis updating a 2009 report that estimated a 7% annual reduction in combined economic output due to climate change.
“The economic costs of not reining in greenhouse-gas emissions are more serious than we previously estimated,” ADB chief economist Shang-Jin Wei said. “At the same time, this new study also shows that reducing emissions and stabilizing the climate will produce benefits and avoid losses for Southeast Asia, which in the long run sharply outweigh the costs of action.”
An ADB brief which summarizes these findings, “Southeast Asia and the Economics of Global Climate Stabilization”, was released during the “COP21” conference on climate change in Paris.
The study looks at the economic impact of climate change across a range of scenarios, including business-as-usual, and another which sees countries taking steps to limit their GHG emissions to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial era level.
The global analysis focuses on the region’s five largest economies–Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam–which account for 90% of Asean emissions.
