Region Plagued By Environmental Issues

September 28, 2011 in Rants & Raves
Tags: Asia-Pacific, climate change, environment, environmental sustainability, government, personal opinion, politics, theangle.org

NOTE: This piece was first published on theangle.org under the title “Environmental Issues Continue To Plague The Region”

Throughout the entire region the environment continues to face growing pressures. It comes from a growing range of converging issues like urban expansion; destruction of native forests; rapidly expanding populations; growing inequality and poverty; water, soil and air pollution; and the international inaction on climate change.

These issues are in of themselves significant for the entire region but some have a greater impact for different parts of the region. More importantly these environmental issues will challenge how the nations of the region collectively respond to them.

Look at Indonesia the vast archipelago. Jakarta will be inundated as sea levels rise unless they can find new and innovative ways of building dykes to keep the sea out. Though unless action is taken these better dykes won’t help keep the sea out. But then we need only look at what is already happening among the Micronesian states, or Vanuatu or Fiji; nations already facing rapidly shrinking land masses as sea levels slowly, but steadily, rise.

They will be among the first climate change refugees, but in this case they will need to have their entire nations relocated and resettled; which of course presents entirely different problems for the region to consider.