Asian Development Bank (ADB) report highlighting the climate adaptation needs among its developing member states, and assessing sector-relevant technological solutions.
According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Asia could see decreases in water supply and food production in many areas, increased risks to coastal areas, and increased exposure to more intense extreme events due to climate change. The region also contains seven of the world’s ten most vulnerable countries, and the resulting economic impacts could be huge. Given this clear need to adapt to changing climates, technology must be explored and utilised as a key component to improving productivity, increasing efficiencies, and ameliorating climate change impacts. This report discusses specific climate change impacts and vulnerabilities across the developing member countries of the ADB, and identifies some of the technologies needed to help reduce those vulnerabilities. It then presents examples such technologies required across six key sectors: agriculture, coastal resources, human health, transportation, water resources, and disaster risk management. For the purposes of this report, the technology review deals mainly with emerging hard technologies, i.e. equipment and infrastructure. Some are very specific technologies, such as floating agriculture, whereas others are broader technology categories, such as crop breeding. The intent is to provide a representative overview of the wide diversity of technological approaches to adaptation that can be supported in a developing country. Each chapter presents a comprehensive discussion of technologies that can meet the needs highlighted, with the authors assessing numerous criteria including effectiveness, relative costs, co-benefits, barriers to and feasibility of implementation, and the potential for financing, amongst others. Each chapter concludes with a synthesis summary, and table that combines the needs and technology assessments, and identifies existing gaps in available technologies. The authors note that while the tables provide an overview of the information presented in the chapter, they do not capture nuances of information and for that reason should always be considered alongside the text.