Perspective

The South-East Asia and Pacific region is blessed with abundant sources of 'green' energy — including sun, wind, water, biomass and geothermal — but governments are still not doing enough to harness them. The 30 countries in this part of the world are sitting just a few degrees below and above the equator, and enjoy an estimated 300 days of sunshine a year. Advances in photovoltaic (PV) technology mean that solar energy can be harnessed even on cloudy days during the rainy season.

A few years ago the clean energy industry seemed to be entering a golden age of limitless growth and infinite potential, the arrival of a new Aquarian age of progressive environmental business. The arrival of the global financial crisis, coinciding with the failed Copenhagen climate talks, put an end to all that, writes Michael Liebreich, Chief Executive, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, on the company's website.

In a recent publication called the 2012 Wealth Report, Knight Frank Research and Citi Private Bank made the bold prediction that by the year 2050, the wealthiest four economies measured by GDP per capita would be in Asia. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea will stand atop the world, with the United States ringing in 5th. By 2050 Hong Kong’s GDP per capita is projected to be USD116,639, a whopping 157 percent increase over the 2010 figure of USD45,301. Before we start salivating over our predicted future wealth, however, we must first consider the many challenges of realizing this level of economic growth in a sustainable way.

Hong Kong is the most livable city on Earth! Really? Well, that’s the conclusion drawn by Filippo Lovato, the winner of an Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) competition that challenged participants to find innovative ways of defining what it meant to be the world’s “best city.” After a carefree honeymoon period when we relished our new status — (take that Melbourne and Vienna!) — a suffocating dose of smog choked us back to reality.

The Philippine’s trikes (motorized tricycles) – the country’s most ubiquitous form of transport – are set for a major makeover with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Government of the Philippines envisaging having up to 100,000 electricity-powered trikes on the road by 2020. An estimated 3.5 million trikes currently ply the country’s streets with 200,000 in Metro Manila, the national capital. As well as causing roadside air and noise pollution the nation’s trike fleet also releases an estimated 10 million tonnes of CO2 every year according to the ADB. The transport sector is the Philippines’ largest source of carbon emissions.

Like many of China's rapidly growing cities, Guangzhou is under siege from landfill. The southern city produces about 18,000 tonnes of household waste every day, 14,000 tonnes of which needs to be disposed of after sorting and recycling. That is as much as the city can handle. Some of the waste is incinerated, but most is sent to landfill, and dumping grounds are slowly surrounding the city. In a controversial move, the city decided from July to start charging residents for waste disposal according to the number of rubbish bags used. An additional charge will be applied for excess waste.

The idea of setting up a conservation trust in Hong Kong has been on the back burner for a number of years but the city’s incumbent Chief Executive, Leung Chun-Ying, is providing new hope that a government-backed trust organization will finally get its wings. Trusts are non-profit organizations that are committed to preserving the cultural landscape and ecological heritage for the public good, indefinitely. Well-known organizations such as the National Trust in the UK have been around for over a century and are seen by the British public as a steward of places significant to its cultural past.

Tropical forests cover about 15 percent of the world’s land surface but every year around 13 million hectares of forest are cleared for crop cultivation, cattle, logging and mining (FAO 2010). Forests are both carbon guzzlers (sinks) and emitters (sources) and deforestation and forest degradation accounts for a whopping 15-17 percent of man-made GHG emissions each year. In the context of climate change, a 50 percent reduction in GHG emissions is needed by 2030 to prevent global temperature rising above 2 degrees Celsius (IPCC 2007, AR4) but the positive news is that reducing deforestation is the “single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions.”

Despite the collective groan over Rio+20’s lack of political leadership and a global process that is failing to urgently address our planetary challenges; the contrast between Rio’s Earth Summit 20 years ago and now, could hardly be greater. Back then, the spirit of sustainability was idealistic, not entirely understood and it then took some time for people to put it into practice and get fuddled by its complexity. Compare this to the current polarized ‘sustainability everything’ and surely we should be applauding Brazil’s canny negotiators for getting to any agreement at all - even if it is a hortatory, non-binding statement called “The Future We Want”.