Abu Dhabi: Climate change will continue to have an adverse affect on Asian countries as they are already proving to be among the most disaster prone in the world, policy-makers warned at a conference in Abu Dhabi
The comments were made at a forum organised by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in partnership with the UAE National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS), which brought together the WMO’s Asian member states to discuss the most effective ways of responding to the climate threat posed to their nations.
“Asia continues to be the most disaster prone region [in the world]. South Asia accounted for a staggering 64 percent of total global fatalities. South East Asia is also another major disaster prone sub-region,” said the outgoing Regional Association for Asia President, Abdulla Mohammad Al Mannai.
“The multitude of disasters in the region clearly highlights the need for cooperation, including in the establishment of multi-hazard early warning systems, at both national, sub-regional and regional levels,” he added.
Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, said that the Gulf region and the UAE were also not exempt from the negative effects of climate change.
“We have already seen some of impacts caused by climate change in this region, nowadays there are more heat waves occurring – one example of that is the heat wave we saw in Kuwait last year with the temperature reaching 54 degrees Celsius.
“Another matter of concern for this region is that we are also starting to see more open droughts, and that is a big challenge that will have an affect on the activities of the region’s countries,” he added.
David Grimes, President of WMO, echoed similar concerns, and said the increasing occurrence of droughts would raise many issues including questions over food security.
“There are big consequences with the onset of droughts, in terms of water availability a lot of water is usually ground water and not surface water, and in ground water those reserves need recharging and droughts obviously have a negative impact on that,” he explained. “This leads to the issue of food security and how we grow food because we have to use water for that,” he added.
Grimes also warned that coastal areas are under threat because of rising seas caused by global warming
“Sea levels are rising because of two factors – heat expansion of water, and melting ice glaciers, both of which are being caused by climate change. This will have a big impact on coastal areas and the people who live there.”
Abdullah Ahmad Al Mandoos, Executive Director of NCMS, said that international cooperation was the best way in tackling the challenges posed by climate change, and that no country could do it on its own.
“Here in the UAE we have done a lot of work in regards to mitigating the affects of climate change, and we want to help spread what we have learned to other countries,” he said.
“We are very much focused towards research, and we work together with the WMO giving them access to the data research that we collect and vice versa. Cooperation is very important because it helps all parties, and holding such a conference here in the UAE is a big encouragement for the work we are doing and shows that we are on the right path,” he added.
Taalas also praised the work of the NCMS, in particular its Research Programme for Rain Enhancement Science, which he said was one way of mitigating water security needs.
“The UAE is funding a very good programme for weather modification which provides a very powerful strategy of enhancing water needs, and we certainly hope to see continued positive results from this programme.”
