THE list of agendas and priorities of many world leaders in 2007, the issue of climate change and global warming are among the most important. Said Daniel Franklin, author of The World in 2007, an annual special issue of The Economist magazine famous. Issues that require new strategies and plans, not only in the energy and water resources, even in all dimensions of life are increasingly at risk and threatened.
In a press release in Paris on 2 February, the group working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which comprises more than 600 authors from 40 countries announced the publication of the first volume of a special report for policy makers, entitled Climate Change 2007.
The first volume covers the basic science on the causes of climate change, evidence of climate change is detected, the scientific methods used to assess the diversity of the causes and predictions of future climate change.
Reports said the content of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide increased significantly due to various human activities since 1.750. Content was 30 times higher than the era before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric records for 650,000 years.
The increase in carbon dioxide caused by fossil fuel use and land-use changes, especially the destruction of forests, while methane and nitrous oxide due to unsustainable farming methods.
According to the NASA report, melting of ice at the poles when it stood at nine percent per decade. The thickness of Arctic ice at the poles down 40 percent since the 1960s. The IPCC report also states that the incidence of category 4 and 5 hurricanes has doubled in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, the usual flood predicted to occur every 100 years would be more likely to occur between 10 and 20 years, including in areas not included in the list of flood risk.
The IPCC forecasts that global warming trend and the impact of this climate of uncertainty is expected to increase further. Over the last century, the earth's surface temperature increased 0.6 ° C. However, much scientific evidence shows that in this century, global temperature will rise 1.4 to 5.8 ° C. Temperature increase is expected to affect human life, including sea level rise of between nine and 88 centimeters (CM) which endanger coastal areas and small islands.
What to do in the situation now? In my opinion, we need to do three strategic steps as soon as possible.
First: Environmental education is more comprehensive. In this regard, I welcome the steps the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation hold a seminar on climate change in Kuala Lumpur, May. Such measures are necessary because there are many in this country do not understand the issue of climate change, including policy makers and professionals.
Perhaps that is why the issue of climate change is not directly into the premises and concerns in the formulation of national development strategies such as the Ninth Malaysia Plan (RMK-9) and the 2007 Budget.
For example, the RMK-9 reports the phrase 'climate change' is cornered in chapter 22 of article 19 of the 'initiatives' on page 485. That only explains about Malaysia's involvement in the IPCC. While the clean development mechanism or CDM, which is one of the methods of reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere described in the final of the energy sector, in chapter 19, article 46 on page 430.
Reading the official documents about the planning of development in recent years in fact intimidate me, because climate change is far cornered, just as the rider in front of hundreds of fourth!
However, I am grateful to the floods in Johor last month opened the eyes of many parties to be more aware that climate change is not rhetoric professor and environmentalist. The issue becomes one of the most important agenda of the moment, including among the leading corporate figures and leaders of developed countries.
Second: I propose a design for the main sectors that are directly related to climate change such as energy, transport, agriculture, industry and environmental conservation are reviewed from the perspective of a more proactive role to reduce carbon emissions.
In a sense, as developing countries, we can get for free costs through the CDM mechanism. I also think that:
- Linkages between sectors are not clearly related to energy and climate policy. On the one hand we provide biodiesel to Europe, but we did not try to use it extensively.
- Renewable energy sector (renewable energy) should be given more incentives to grow.
- Emission of carbon from the transport sector strategy should begin with more planned.
- All reports and policy development needs to be processed again by taking into account the effects of climate change.
- All ag
encies must have specific targets to address climate change issues.
Third: The implementation of large development projects approved should be examined more holistically, particularly involving changes in climate and weather cycles such as water supply, irrigation, drainage, forestry, fisheries, agriculture and tourism. The project is risky and may not achieve its goals if a new climate cycle is not taken into consideration.
For example, what is the use we menggondolkan forest to build a dam if the dam is finally unable to hold water for use during the dry season. That is why - in this column many times I mentioned the fact that many developed countries no longer build dams upstream, but instead of water reservoirs in the river or the estuary is through projects like the Marina Barrage in Singapore.
As a result, lower-cost, sure enough water, reduced pollution as all the responsibility to conserve water in the river and the effects of climate change can be reduced through forest conservation.
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