Clearest message

The clearest and most pertinent message from the summit was that climate change is a global threat and must be tackled by global partnerships for a more sustainable future.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reminded us that “the human, environmental and financial cost of climate change is fast becoming unbearable.” US President Barack Obama emphasized that the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of action. No region of the world knows this better than Asia and the Pacific, where there is a compelling case for urgent climate action.

Between 1980 and 2009 the people of Asia and the Pacific shouldered the burden of 85 percent of global deaths and 38 percent of global economic losses due to natural disasters.

Just weeks ago, heavy monsoon rains and floods across Pakistan caused more than 300 deaths and impacted more than 1.8 million people. Typhoon Haiyan killed more than 8,000 people in the central Philippines last year, with an estimated US$15 billion in damage.

Economically vulnerable

Resource and carbon-intensive economies are also economically vulnerable. The Asia-Pacific region uses three times more resources to produce one unit of GDP than the rest of the world.

We are not only the region most vulnerable to climate-related disasters, but also to resource-price volatility. As resource costs rise, the economic impacts are most severe on the poorest and vulnerable in our region. More than 42 million people in Asia and the Pacific were pushed back into poverty due to rising energy and food prices in 2011 alone.

Turning resource constraints into opportunities for economic growth and poverty reduction, Asia-Pacific countries have adopted pioneering strategies to promote green growth and environmentally sustainable approaches.

At the summit, China affirmed its aim to reduce carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 45 percent compared to 2005. Fiji spoke of its green growth strategy, already in place, and ambitions to generate all electricity from renewable resources by 2030. Malaysia and Indonesia are reforming fossil fuel subsidies to encourage a shift to cleaner energy. Mongolia plans to reach 20 to 25 percent of total energy production from renewables by 2020.

These are but some examples of the already strong regional climate actions taking place.

But change is not happening fast enough. We need to massively scale up these actions. The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific will continue to urge leaders in the region to seize the opportunity to intensify national climate actions and commitments, and to work even more closely together to make our vision of the sustainable, prosperous and resilient future we want a reality.

The author is an undersecretary-general of the United Nations and executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). She is also the UN’s Sherpa for the G20 and previously served as governor of the Central Bank of Pakistan and vice president of the MENA Region of the World Bank.