The forgotten issues of climate change

Sound water management is a prime part of maintaining eco-systems. How to allocate water resources to various users is a growing controversy. This can be seen in the Mekong region, where the Chinese government has built 11 major dams to produce hydro-electricity along the upper Mekong. With water levels along the Mekong River in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the lowest in 100 years, local eco-systems are under stress with erosion, silting, algae, and dried up river beds, destroying local industries such as fishing. This is causing local climate change, where Vietnam is concerned with sea water intruding into the Mekong Delta. This is now a major issue that the five country Mekong River Commission is struggling to solve through negotiations.

Poor water management is affecting other regions within Asia. Most Asian cities are facing problems with flooding urban areas, the polluting of rivers, and bacteria contamination. This is greatly affecting the purity of Malaysian household water, as it is pumped from rivers travelling through urban and industrial areas. The mega-city Jakarta is now sinking at a rapid rate, between 2-25 cm a year, depending on the area, due to residents using groundwater for household and industrial use.

Poor forest management is leading to the spreading of highly intensive forest fires. Previously logged areas have removed the old large fire-resistant trees, that have been replaced with quicker growing, more intensely planted soft to medium wood type trees. In addition, many forests have long dry grasses, and built-up woody debris on the ground, which provides fuel to highly intensive fires.

Hyper-consumerism

Since WWII, US firms embarked on creating mass consumerism with product differentializing, working on ways to decrease product lifecycles, so new products could be introduced, and turned repairable products into disposable products. The effects of Kotler's 'marketing', and the 'Blue Ocean Strategy' culture in marketing and distribution, helped to create a consumerism based on wants and not needs. This led to a massive per-capita consumption of consumer products, the disposal of packaging, and the rise in household debt.

Manufacturers sought to achieve massive economies of scale with mass production concepts, and Michael Porter's cluster approach to industry developed, until it went offshore, in the name of lowering costs. This transfers resource demand to other economies, and externalities like pollution. Hyper-consumerism has destroyed decentralised production based on craft, pride, passion, and the communities that went into creating company towns. This has led to the increasing burden of government transfers to households within welfare systems in the west, increasing public debt as another hidden externality.

There are quick solutions

Approximately 29 percent of greenhouse gas emissions originate from fossil fuel electricity production. Alternative methods of power production, such as solar energy, with large fields of panel arrays contributes to change of micro climates within the regions they are located within. There are now new and safer technologies available for nuclear power production, that would lower greenhouse emissions dramatically.

Likewise, there are long term strategies to tackle the issues of population growth and increasing urbanization. Water and forest management must become much higher environmental priorities. Practical strategies are available.

However, as is now being seen by the Mekong River issues, multi-lateral cooperation between countries is very important. If human induced climate change is to be avoided, bodies like the Mekong River Commission must be made to work. If they can't, these issues won't be solved, and there is potential in the future for international friction over climate change issues.

Most climate change issues relate to the third world

Most discussion concerning climate change occurs in Western economies, while most of the current issues relating to climate change are occurring within the third world. If one is concerned with carbon emissions, which this article has only just touched upon, most carbon emissions occur within the third world.

There is little point in having discussions about climate change within the G7, or G20, or World Economic Forum, if stakeholders from the third world are not there. Climate change issues must be addressed by the third world itself, for solutions to occur. Wealthy nations cannot dictate solutions, but only engage, and assist in finding solutions.

The above provides a list of research topics, that some reallocation of funding for climate change research will help to shed some more light and discussion upon them. This is important to prevent tunnel vison within the climate change discussion.