News Analysis: Technical innovation, infrastructural assistance priorities for climate change strategy

Global leaders and their delegations are gathering in Paris for the UN Climate Conference and discussing measures to curb climate change as the potentially devastating consequences of human intervention in nature's delicate environmental balance has already begun to take its toll.

Attendees at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) are ostensibly united in exploring and agreeing on a single universal commitment to cut greenhouse emissions and ensure that global warming stays below 2 degrees Celsius -- a key temperature which leading scientists concur is the upper limit of planetary warming that will allow the human race to exist beyond the very real threat of a global cataclysm of environmental disasters.

But while all forward-looking countries, regardless of their stage of industrialization professedly, agree that concrete action must be taken imminently as previous mechanisms to address climate change, like the deficient Kyoto Protocol treaty, and the recent and more successful Cancun Agreements in 2010, have not been without their drawbacks, how this action is packaged and comprehensively actualized in the short, mid and long-term poses a myriad of complications.

The time has come however, for these complications to be comprehensively traversed and a universal pact inked between the almost 200 negotiators in Paris, as for the past two decades deliberations over the very issue that has since intensified -- that of the relentless pace of global warming -- have failed to see a wholesale reduction in global CO2 emissions.

This has only served to emphasize the fact that over the coming 25 or 30 years, while the climate may not obviously seem that different to that of today, rainfall, for example will be notably heavier in many parts of the world.

Added to this, the periods between ferocious downpours and the inevitable floods thereafter, will almost certainly grow hotter and drier and speed up desertification in numerous at-risk areas.

Hurricanes and typhoons, scientists also claim, will intensify due to them gathering more heat from ever-warming oceans, meaning the potential for devastation will be manifold, with coastal regions likely to be devastatingly impacted, much like Kiribati in the Central Pacific, the Micronesian Marshall Islands and The Maldives, which are already dealing with migration dilemmas due to severe ocean inundation.

Indeed, longer term prospects if emissions aren't curbed, however, paint a far Armageddon-like picture, with leading authorities warning of the potential for the destabilization of political systems as resources become scarce, and waves upon waves of refugees being forced to migrate in a scenario that some scientists believe could precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in Earth's history, as the inevitable melting of the polar ice caps will ultimately cause the seas to rise high enough to flood most of the world's coastal cities.

While such doomsday synopses may not occur for hundreds or even thousands of years, a number of environmental strategists have deconstructed the essential paradigm shifts that must take place to curb climate change.

Tom O'Sullivan, the founder of the independent energy consultancy, Mathyos Japan, told a press briefing here recently that one of the biggest challenge, in fact, lied in Asia.

"The biggest challenge remains in Asia, particularly for China, India and ASEAN as four of the five top CO2 emitters are in Asia and countries like Indonesia as well recently are starting to emit huge amounts of CO2 due to deforestation," O'Sullivan said.

"But on a per capita basis the United States dominates when it comes to CO2 emissions and Russia is also unfortunately a strong emitter due to its vast resources and also its climate, and Africa, which accounts for 20 percent of the global population currently, but only 3 percent of CO2 emission, is a continent facing a significant 'catch-up' as we can see there's a high degree of correlation between GDP and fossil fuel consumption," he said.

He went on to explain the fact that modern-day "climate science" is largely indisputable and stated that the world has already hit a 1-degree Celsius temperature rise compared with preindustrial levels and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the world was on a mid-term collision course with a 2.7-degree Celsius increase, without immediate intervention, and oceans in the Pacific between the Peru and Southeast Pacific basins could see accelerated mid-term warming hitting a catastrophic 6 degrees Celsius.

O'Sullivan also highlighted the fact that in Asia, Particle Pollution (PP) readings like those for PM 2.5 were also at a dangerous threshold.

Jun Arima, a former Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official and professor at GraSPP (Graduate School of Public Policies) at the University of Tokyo, said authorities in this region were calling for the quick application in Paris of a global strategy that blends both pragmatic innovation with flexible implementation.

With numerous climate-related tragedies striking close to home, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction stated that four of the world's most disaster-prone nations are in Asia, with 80 million people affected in 2014 alone and nearly 60 billion U.S. dollars in economic losses incurred in the 226 natural disasters that occurred in the Asia and Pacific region last year, more than half of the global total.

While countries like India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and China all clocking up significant death tolls, Arima believed that more innovation and less bureaucracy was essential in tacking such issues.

China's massive investments in renewable energy technology and implementation, dwarfing that of the United States, and the potential for the world's second-largest economy to provide essential infrastructural assistance to developing regions in Asia, have been hailed here by Arima and other experts in the field.

Far from inhibiting energy supply, such assistance could augment power capability and provide critical new revenue streams for developing nations based on the seamless introduction of clean energy-based infrastructural projects and the means to finance them through multilateral development banks.

Along with the wholesale introduction of new infrastructure for nuclear, solar, wind, hydro and other forms of clean energy production to the region, enhancing thermal efficiency for coal-fired power plants, for example, could be highly efficacious way to bridge any power deficits in the short-term, particularly in rapidly growing industrial regions like India, Arima noted.

If such clean energy infrastructural projects were kickstarted in developing nations, he said, "We could feasibly see emissions reduced by 17 percent by 2040." Enditem