The Asian Development Bank (ADB) says that countries in the region must take immediate action to reduce the negative impact of climate change.
“The region’s rapid economic growth has often come with concerns over environmental degradation. We are increasingly using resources at the cost of environment,” ADB president Haruhiko Kuroda said in an official statement on Thursday.
“Unless we change, the efforts to improve both human life and the environment will be useless,” he added.
Asian Pacific countries have been the world’s largest resource users since the mid-1990s, and if current trends continue, their CO2 emissions are likely to triple by 2050, putting an unbearable strain on the earth’s ecosystem.
A study jointly conducted by the ADB and the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) revealed that regional governments must create a carbon market, phase out pervasive fossil fuel subsidies, and establish an Asian free-trade zone for high-impact, low-carbon technologies and services to promote green growth in Asia.
Low-carbon growth would open vast new business opportunities and steer nations away from their dependence on the highly volatile fossil fuel market at the same time, according to the study.
It estimated that Asian Pacific countries would need more than $6 trillion worth of investment in new energy infrastructure by 2030.
“The low-carbon development agenda needs to expand beyond energy to cover all sectors,” ADBI dean Masahiro Kawai said.
