The Politics of Climate Vulnerability in Asia
“The seriousness of climate change has become readily apparent over the past decades, with increasingly visible evidence of impacts and risks across the globe—from intensifying hurricanes to large-scale destructive wildfires. Asia is often pointed to as one of the most vulnerable regions, given numerous countries with long coastlines and large populations in low-lying areas, such as the Philippines, which regularly experiences destructive typhoons from the western Pacific Ocean. Other countries such as India face potentially severe water scarcity as temperatures rise. Nations such as Laos and Cambodia face challenges like high rates of poverty and resource overexploitation that will test their ability to adapt.”
“But as this list of potential vulnerabilities points out, there is no clearly agreed-upon way to understand who is most vulnerable to climate change and what should be done about it. Within Asia, different definitions and concepts of vulnerability are used, with no consensus on which approach is the best. In fact, any vulnerability assessment is subjective and contextual, as it depends on what indicators are used, what data is available, and how the assessments are analyzed. Given that such comparisons of vulnerability are subjective, they also can be highly political. For example, vulnerability assessments can allow countries to claim a “victim slot” as suffering from climate impacts without a harder look at their own culpability in causing the problem in the first place. It is common to find countries presenting climate vulnerability as something that has been imposed on them by outside forces beyond their control, without paying attention to the ways in which internal decisions have increased vulnerability to these external exposures. Failures to include future climate risks and vulnerability in current development decisions is a problem across most countries of the world, and is especially acute in the fast-growing but climate-vulnerable countries of Asia.”
“To highlight these problems, I focus specifically on Việt Nam, which is often cited as a vulnerable country due to large populations living in coastal and low-lying areas, particularly in the Mekong Delta in the south, where nearly half the land area is only one meter (3.3 feet) above sea level. A brutal fall 2020 storm season saw nine typhoons in a row hit the central region, requiring rapid evacuation of millions of people; around 300 people died, and there was extensive property damage from the flooding that lasted for weeks. Việt Nam was an early joiner of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of forty at-risk countries that advocate for stronger climate action at the global level. Members of this coalition have particularly lobbied for increased donor funding for adaptation, and Việt Nam in particular has allocated billions in finance to reduce vulnerabilities and increase the country’s capacity to cope with climate impacts.”
“At the same time, however, Việt Nam continues to have large numbers of people who are vulnerable to climate change because of an unwillingness to rethink current development trajectories. Resource-intensive economic growth in the past three decades has degraded many ecosystems, and concentrated populations and assets in coastal and floodplain areas that place them in the path of climate impacts like sea level rise and increased frequency of hurricanes. Export-led industrial policy and intensive input-heavy agriculture are among the policies that have increased risk and reduced overall resilience. This situation begs the question of whether countries concerned about being victims of climate change are doing enough themselves to avoid creating the conditions by which people become vulnerable.”
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NYSEAN Member Pamela McElwee, Associate Professor of Human Ecology at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey writes for Education About Asia Journal (Vol. 26:1).
