Devastating floods in Thailand and other parts of Asia are a wake-up call to governments to do more to cope with the effects of climate change, a top Asian Development Bank official has warned. Asia is dotted with large coastal cities from Shanghai to Calcutta that are vulnerable to flooding, and governments need to put in place long-term solutions to deal with the problem, said David McCauley, the ADB's lead climate change specialist.
Research suggested that more floods of the scale that hit Thailand in recent months, leaving more than 600 dead affecting millions of livelihoods, are likely as climate change progresses, he said. "I think that these events are wake-up calls for governments around the region to pay more attention to these long term trends," McCauley told AFP in Singapore during a stopover on his way to climate change talks in Durban. McCauley said a study last year carried out jointly by the Manila-based ADB, the World Bank and the Japan International Co-operation Agency forecast the flooding in Thailand - but did not predict how soon it would come.
"The floods that we saw in Thailand are consistent with what's predicted to occur as a result of climate change," he said.