Regional response to climate change should not be just a moral issue

Singapore, 13 May 2010 - "You do things when they make sense, if you can see that they're real, if you can measure progress."

Grappling with the politics of climate change, experts at last week's APEC seminar, Asia Regionalism: Responding to Climate Change and Natural Disasters considered the role of regional institutions. While questions of climate change have often been positioned as moral ones, objective scientific indicators should inform a regional agenda.

Professor Zha Daojiong of Peking, University School of International Studies explains that:

"It's not a question of morals or rights. The question is: is there tangible evidence that governments will gain something by making these changes?"

The classic dilemma in international cooperation is that while economies may agree on the need for collective carbon emission reductions, they are concerned that restrictions that may drive up their own industrial costs and ultimately render them less competitive than others. Moreover, they reason that if the largest greenhouse gas emitters do not participate, the impact of their own reductions will be negated so there is a sense of "we will... but only if you do it first."

"For all practical purposes," says Daojiong, "there needs to be a stock-taking of which adaptation strategies have been successful and what each government has gained through implementing them." For some economies, evidence may assuage concerns. For example, environmentally vulnerable economies may find that the potential gains outweigh the costs of mitigating emissions.

Objective research is the best platform on which to garner political support.

Campaigns based in purely environmental terms may fail to resonate with a broader public. Activist governments and other proponents have therefore sought to correlate climate change with economic growth and many have pointed to the potential growth of "green jobs."

Contradicting fears that limiting carbon emissions hampers business, business communities throughout the Asia Pacific are often very supportive of legislation to curb emissions. In 2009, the APEC Business Advisory Council recommended that Leaders take specific action on climate change, explaining that rather than limiting business, specific recommendations provide a dimension of much-needed predictability in an otherwise elusive economic environment.