Environmental Issues in Southeast Asia

Environmental problems in Southeast Asia include logging depleted rain forests and overfishing the once-plentiful fish supply in the Gulf of Thailand. The megacities of Southeast Asia can not adequately dispose of all the garbage and waste they produce.

The environmental policy across Asia has been “grow now and clean up later.” According to a 1997 Asian Development Bank report, "Asia is the world's most polluted and environmental degraded region.” During the past 30 years, Asia has lost half of its forest cover, and with it countless unique animal and plant species. A third of its agricultural land has been degraded. Fish stocks have fallen by 5 percent. No other region has so many heavily polluted cities, and rivers and lakes are among the worlds most polluted."

Asia is home to 13 of the world's 15 most polluted cities. Pollution is not just a local phenomena. It can be a global one. Scientists estimated in 2010 that one third of the ozone in Los Angeles originates in Asia.

The 1997 economic crisis resulted in a reduction of pollution as people drove less and bought fewer cars, factories reduced their output or were closed, construction ceased and development projects were scrapped. But not all news was good. Spending on the environment fell and poverty caused by the crisis led to increases in legal logging, wildlife poaching, overfishing, cyaniide fishing and slash and burn agriculture.

See the Mekong River.

Global Warming in Asia

According to a report of the Working Group II of the U.N.”s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) grain harvests in the Asian region could drop by as much as 30 percent, leading to skyrocketing food prices and the starvation of 132 million people in Asia in the 2050s, if fossil fuels continue to be consumed at the current rate. Countries with ric-growing flood plains off major river and near coastal areas could loose vast tracts of agricultural land to rising sea levels. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, March 29, 2007]