Bangkok--22 Aug--AIT
Less than one year after joining the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Natural Resources Management field of study Assistant Professor Clemens Grunbuhel has made a mark in academic circles by contributing to one of the region’s most authoritative reports on the state of human development.
In the Asia-Pacific Human Development Report 2012, published by the United Nations Development Programme, Dr. Grunbuhel is one of the principal contributors of technical background papers. The publication released in May was aimed at reinvigorating climate change dialogue by bringing people’s concerns into the fore ahead of the Rio +20 Conference.
This year’s report titled “One Planet to Share: Sustaining Human Progress in a Changing Climate” examines the consequences of the anthropocene era or so-called “Age of Man” on Asia, “in which the sheer scale of human activities is not only transforming the natural environment, but also changing how it functions and interacts with people.”
Across its six chapters, the report is unequivocal that the unprecedented pace and scale of human activities have been transforming the natural environment and contributing to climate change. Asia-Pacific, the report notes, not only has many of the world’s most climate-exposed territories, it is also home to millions of the most vulnerable people. And while the most vulnerable people in Asia have contributed little to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, they will face some of the most serious consequences as temperatures continue to rise.
Also rising are oceans, which threaten low lying coastal areas now home to tens of millions. Currently there are eleven mega-deltas formed by rivers originating from the Tibetan Plateau. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), two of these, the Ganges-Brahmaputra and the Mekong River mega-deltas, are at very high risk.
A case in point are the fertile floodplains of the Ganges River delta where seawater encroaching onto rice paddy lands has forced a chain reaction of maladaptation that is fundamentally altering peoples’ lives, Dr. Grunbuhel says.
As soil salinities increased, some farmers switched from rice cultivation to saltwater shrimp. This, however, exacerbated the salinity issue and pushed the entire region out of rice farming which, in turn, put famers' livelihoods at risk. In an attempt to backtrack, new farming techniques are now being tested, such as switching to freshwater prawn or adopting a rice-fish system.
“Moving to shrimp production has had a profound impact on farmers’ abilities to feed themselves, and increased vulnerability owing to new dependency on shrimp markets.” Promoting a more balanced rice-fish system for small-scale farmers would be a more sustainable option, Dr. Grunbuhel recommends.
Dr. Grunbuhel’s writings also come through in chapter four titled “Raising Rural Resilience.” In Asia and the Pacific, it notes, nearly 700 million people in rural areas live in extreme poverty and are exposed to a wide range of climate change impacts — from flash floods in mountain areas, to sea-level rises in river delta regions.
Though Cambodian rice farmers have yet to experience noticeable impacts from climate change, they are experiencing new forms of economic dependency to middlemen, the School of Resources, Environment and Development academic argues.
A common denominator for both countries is that they are highly exposed and sensitive to climate events, and lack adequate adaptive capacity, Dr. Grunbuhel emphasizes. Each is also at risk to new forms of dependency that limit rural dwellers’ abilities to cope sustainably with economic, social and technological transformations.
A native of Austria, Dr. Grunbuhel earned a Dr. Phil in 2004 from the University of Vienna. Prior to joining AIT in 2011, he worked at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), which is Australia's national science agency.