Ecosystems and biodiversity

With only 3 % of the world’s total landmass, ASEAN’s rich ecosystems account for 20 % of the world’s bio-diversity. Indonesia alone contains 10 % of the world’s remaining tropical rainforest. But ASEAN’s forest envi-ronment is under major threat from the highest relative rate of deforestation of any major tropical region — an activity that contributes to around 25 % of anthropo-genically released greenhouse gases. ³³⁴ Agricultural practices, growing population and expansion of human settlements, species invasion, land-use change, pollu-tion, and climate change all contribute to forest cover decline at a rate of about 1.1 % each year. This equates to losing up to 75 % of Southeast Asia’s original forests and up to 42 % of its biodiversity by 2100. ³³⁵

Regarding marine environment, Southeast Asia has a range of sea and coastal ecosystems including sand dunes, estuaries, mangroves, coastal mudflats, algal beds, and coral reefs. With over 170 thousand kilome-tres of coastline, it holds one third of the world’s sea-grass areas, which support economically important fisheries and over one third of the world’s coral reefs. ³³⁶ The region’s rich marine ecosystems bring significant economic advantage to the local population through aquaculture, trade, and tourism. ³³⁷

The high degree of biodiversity generates high pro-ductivity from coastal and marine activities, providing a living for around 20 million people and an estimated

334 FAO (2005): Global Forest Resources Assessment 2005: Progress to-wards sustainable forest management. FAO Forestry Paper 147. Rome: Unit-ed Nations Food and Agricultural Organization

335 Sodhi, N.S. / Koh, L.P. / Brook, B.W. / Ng, P.K.L. (2004): Southeast Asian biodiversity: an impending disaster, in: Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 19, pp. 654–660

336 ASEAN report to the World Summit on Sustainable Development, 2002 337 Burke, L. / Selig, L. / Spalding, M. (2002): Reefs at Risk in Southeast Asia, Washington DC: World Resource Institute

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annual income of $ 2.3 billion. ³³⁸ Coral reefs provide coastal protection from extreme weather, reducing the need for costly coastal defences. The reefs are also of great value to the scientific community; providing an underwater laboratory to investigate global climate, changes in sea level and acidity. However, rapid urbani-sation in coastal areas, agricultural and aquacultural practices, and the characteristic steep slopes of the lo-cal terrain ³³⁹ all pose a major threat to the resilience of coastal systems.

Globally, 20–30 % of all coral reefs are thought to be severely degraded. ³⁴⁰ While this is nothing new (coral reefs have disappeared at previous points in history and some have suggested they will disappear again by the end of the century ³⁴¹), human activities are now also a major factor. ³⁴² Within the ASEAN region, 88 % of coral reefs are thought to be at risk.

Significant changes to biodiversity and eco-system functioning threatens the quality of life for many people in the ASEAN region who rely on the forests for their livelihood, food, water, and shel-ter and will have a significant impact on the global heritage of the rich forest and marine environment.

Case Study 2: Southeast Asia Rainforest Programme Malaysia’s Danum Valley conservation area is one of the largest, best-protected expanses of pristine lowland forest remaining in Southeast Asia. It covers nearly 450 square kilometres and is embedded within an excep-tionally large timber / plantation concession that covers over 10,000 square kilometres. The field station was set up 25 years ago with support from the Royal Soci-ety, the UK’s national academy of science and is the re-search base of the Society’s Southeast Asia Rainforest Programme (SEARRP).

Originally established to document the diversity of the forest and underlying mechanisms that maintain it, today the multidisciplinary research activities focus on understanding how changing climate and agricultural practices affect the forest ecosystem, and how the for-est can contribute to a sustainable future. In recognition that oil palm plantation and forest must co-exist, cur-rent research includes measurements of gas emissions into the atmosphere to determine how this is altered by changing land use, large-scale rainforest regeneration experiments, and studies on the effects of forest frag-mentation on species diversity. The work done at Da-num is recognised as world class, making it one of the

338 ADB (2008): Special Report on Food Prices and Inflation in Developing Asia: Is Poverty Coming to an End? Manila: Asian Development Bank Eco-nomics and Research Department

339 UNEP (2001): State of the Environment and Policy Retrospective: 1972–

2002, in: UNEP (ed.): Global Environment Outlook 3, pp. 240–269, online:

http://www.unep.org/geo/geo3/english/

340 Marine Pollution Bulletin (2008), No. 56, pp. 18–24 341 IAP (2009)

342 Wilkinson, C. (2008): Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2008. Towns-ville: Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and Reef and Rainforest Centre

leading rainforest research centres in the tropical world.

As a result, it can provide the evidence-based advice needed by policy makers to manage tropical forests, not just in Malaysia, but throughout the entire tropics.

An important legacy of Danum Valley is the people that it trains. These come from all over the world but signifi-cantly many of those from Malaysia now occupy posi-tions of influence locally. SEARRP research has attracted generous funding from Sime Darby, a large Malaysian multinational conglomerate, as well as other interna-tional organisations, and its future is secure for many years to come.

Case Study 3: REEFRES — Developing ubiquitous restoration practices for Indo-Pacific reefs

Coral reefs provide the largest source of subsistence to people in the Indo-Pacific region. The aim of the REE-FRES project, ³⁴³ was to develop novel methods for ac-tive coral reef restoration, to improve the efficiency of those methods (in terms of physical coral restoration and cost), to strengthen local capacity, and to share expertise and facilities amongst the leading research groups around the world.

The project ran for four years (2005–2008), and was funded by the EU’s FP6 and involved a consortium of seven research groups, ³⁴⁴ which were teamed as EU-Asian pairs, each pair working in one of four selected sites based at Eilat, Phuket Island, Singapore, and the Philippines, to develop viable coral colonies. The work demonstrated the feasibility of active coral reef restora-tion and resulted in 20 scientific papers and a practical reef rehabilitation manual written in simple English that could be used worldwide.

Since the project’s completion, participants have offered the following insights: First, most of the practi-cal work involved was ‘low-tech’ and did not involve or require highly trained or educated people. This meant the project was able to involve local people, such as fisherman on a voluntary basis. The strength of local en-gagement has helped to ensure the continued use of the research, for example, Thai officials are reported to have used the findings to inform official reef manage-ment and partners from the Philippines are now work-ing on different village education programmes to train local people in reef restoration techniques that revive the reef, fish populations and local livelihoods. Singa-pore is also investigating ways to transplant corals.

Second, the project required some high levels of in-country training and experience. This included six-month post-graduate research placements for one or two EU partners, plus about 15 local postgraduate

stu-343 See Gruber, F. / Degelsegger, A. (Eds.) (2009): Spotlight on: Excellent Researchers from Southeast Asia. Results of a SEA-EU-NET mapping study for details

344 The seven groups in the consortium including one small to medium sized enterprise were from Israel, Italy, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the UK.

dents, local technicians, facilities and neighbouring-country students too. Third, for a project of this type, the scale and scope this was smaller than other compara-tive international interventions such as those funded via the World Bank and USAID. At the same time, the project was able to ‘free-ride’ or makes use of existing investments by other donors.

Case Study 4: The Coral Triangle Initiative

The Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) was launched as a six-country program of regional cooperation in 2007 to protect the outstanding coastal and marine resources of the Coral Triangle — a geographical area encompass-ing 5.7 million square kilometres of the coral-rich waters of Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands, and the Philippines. It is common-ly regarded by Southeast Asian partners as an exemplar for regional collaboration.

The CTI was initially proposed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia in August 2007. It was officially launched later that year during the 13th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Con-vention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bali, follow-ing political endorsement from 21 heads of states. An action plan was signed in 2009. The CTI is led by six cooperating governments, with the Asia Development Bank acting as a financing facilitator and co-ordinator.

The initiative also includes a wide range of partners and stakeholders as funders, implementers, and beneficiar-ies. These include the Global Environment Facility, the US Government, the Australian Government and sev-eral NGOs including Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and the WWF. Mobilisation of re-sources from this wide range of stakeholders has been of major benefit and has allowed the transfer of expert knowledge on marine conservation and has also gener-ated over US$ 350 million of funding.

As a model for regional cooperation, the CTI has been praised as “an incredible step forward for conser-vation” by Rebecca Patton, Chief Conservation Strate-gies Officer with The Nature Conservancy. According to Professor Terry Hughes, Director of Centre of Excel-lence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS), it is “one of the most important marine conservation measures ever un-dertaken in the world” and “as much about nation build-ing and food security as it is about reef conservation”.

Participants have offered the following lessons.

First, governance structures can be complex, but they work for the region. These include summits for Minis-ters, meetings for senior officials, country co-ordinators, national-level co-ordination groups and participation from a range of national-level ministries (e.g. Ministries for Science, Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment and Natural Resources). Second, countries have their own responsibilities. They each have their own country-level action plans and each country produces ‘State of the Coral Triangle’ annual reports. Third, the initiative

de-ploys a range of holistic multidisciplinary approaches from marine protection to developing alternative liveli-hoods. Fourth, awareness of social and cultural contexts, including language, education levels, pace of actions, and an emphasis on knowledge transfer and empower-ing local communities is crucial to the day to day opera-tion of the programme. Fifth, leveraging wider regional resources and match-funding has helped to generate scale. For example, the Asian Development Bank has recently approved roughly US$ 12 million of additional support to help Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines improve management of the Coral Triangle. The three countries will provide an additional US$ 3 million in non-cash contributions. The additional investment will be used to build capacity within oversight institutions and provide people living in coastal communities with job alternatives. ³⁴⁵

8.3.3 Water

Water security presents a major global challenge for the future, owing to the effects of climate change and rapid shifts in land use, and also to a growing unsustainable demand for water. Global water demand has tripled in the past 50 years. ³⁴⁶ Just 2.5 % of the world’s water is freshwater, of which only 0.4 % is available and acces-sible for use.

Currently, around 2.5 billion people have inade-quate access to water for sanitation and waste disposal and nearly 900 million have inadequate access to safe drinking water. ³⁴⁷ Predictions vary but some estimate that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in regions with absolute water scarcity and that two-thirds of the world’s population could be under water stress condi-tions. ³⁴⁸ By 2050, an estimated 4 billion people could be living in countries that are chronically short of water, ³⁴⁹ posing profound challenges to security, human health, economic productivity, national security and the envi-ronment.

Within ASEAN, overall water demand is expected to increase by one-third by 2015. ³⁵⁰ Although most South-east Asian nations do not experience physical water scarcity, seasonal water scarcity can be an issue. High rates of development put pressure on the sustainable

345 Rosenkranz, Rolf (2011): ADB Approves More Funding for the Coral Triangle Initiative (20 May 2011), online: http://www.devex.com/en/articles/

adb-approves-more-funding-for-coral-trinagle-initiative

346 Singh, Ashbindu presenting for UNEP: A Tale of Two Trends: provid-ing information and knowledge for decision-makprovid-ing in water-scare regions through water assessments, online: http://www.unwater.org/downloads/

www.Singh.pdf

347 WHO / UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sani-tation (2008): Progress in Drinking-water and SaniSani-tation: special focus on sanitation, MDG Assessment Report 2008, p. 25

348 http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml

349 Clarke, Robin / King, Jannet (2004): The Water Atlas: A unique visual analysis of the world’s most critical resource

350 ASEAN (2005): ASEAN Strategic Plan of Action on Water Resources Management. Online: http://environment.asean.org/files/ASEAN%20Stra- tegic%20Plan%20of%20Action%20on%20Water%20Resources%20Man-agement.pdf, most recent access date: 27 May 2011

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water supply and sanitation, and increase competition for water resources. Several of the ASEAN member states are unlikely to meet the Millennium Development Goals relating to drinking water and sanitation.

The key water challenges for the ASEAN region have already been set out in the ASEAN Strategic Plan of Ac-tion of Water Resources and Management. ³⁵¹ They in-clude collecting and maintaining high quality data, miti-gating the effects of extreme events on water resources (especially to subsistence farmers and the poor), sus-taining and improving water quality, improving govern-ance systems, for example of interconnected surface and groundwater resources, and acquiring financing for the development of new water infrastructure. ³⁵²

Massive investments in water technology have ena-bled some richer nations (such as Singapore) to offset high stressor levels. However without remedying under-lying causes, less wealthy nations remain vulnerable. ³⁵³ Case Study 5: EU-INCO Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)

EU-INCO IWRM supported about 67 international sci-entific cooperation projects related to integrated water resources through FPs 4–6 (1999–2006). The projects mobilised 530 research teams across Europe and part-ner countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Mediterranean and Latin America. Participating ASEAN member states included Thailand, Vietnam, In-donesia, the Philippines and Cambodia. The scale of the research effort makes this a valuable case of European Commission-funded international thematic research.

Lessons reported by those involved in the IWRM independent review ³⁵⁴ include that the ‘EU-INCO wa-ter research-funding model works’. It could be used by other departments within the Commission’s Research Directorate, and provided a ‘friendly’ potential interface to work with other Divisions e.g. Environment, RELEX, Development, EuropeAid and Trade. Indeed the scale and international scope of IWRM has increased its vis-ibility to relevant partners.

In addition, the review also noted the need for a broad recognition of the socio-political context (water-food-trade nexus). As figure 99 below, taken from the review describes, ‘research approaches taking as the starting point the socially constructed preferences of water management for human consumption and food security, stand better chances’. This implies wider policy input into the framing of research work programmes would be beneficial.

351 ASEAN (2005) 352 ASEAN (2005)

353 Vörösmarty, C.J. et al. (2010): Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity, in: Nature, 467, pp. 555–561.

354 Downloaded from ec.europa.eu/research/water.../incowater_fp4fp6_

rapport_technique_en.pdf May 2011

Figure 99: Conceptualising the trajectory of water management deter-mined by society — the upper trajectory; and the trajectory identified by ecosystem scientists and economists — the lower trajectory. Convergence is achieved by getting the science into the political processes that determine water use and policy.

To this end, the independent review also advocates con-structive engagement with those at the user end of the process e.g. those involved in water resources alloca-tion and management. In addialloca-tion, the review notes that successful international cooperation requires centres of research excellence in partner countries and trained scientists and professionals in the sector. There may be benefits in supporting the continued development of regional platforms (centres of excellence and training) alongside scientific cooperation.

8.3.4 Food

Agriculture accounts for 70 % of global freshwater use.

Securing future food security under water-scarce con-ditions and increasing economic and population pres-sures will be a major global challenge. The World Bank has estimated that demand for food will increase by 50 % by 2030 owing to the growing global population, rising affluence and changes in dietary preferences. ³⁵⁵ It has been estimated that an additional 40 million tonnes of aquatic food a year will be needed by 2030 to meet changing dietary demands, despite catches of wild fish remaining roughly stable at around 90 million tonnes per year for the past quarter of a century. ³⁵⁶

Regional food preferences, export traditions, and geographical conditions combine to make food secu-rity a particularly pressing issue in the ASEAN countries.

About 35 % of the region’s GDP comes directly from ag-riculture, but beyond economic productivity, farming is part of daily life in the region and remains a strong part of cultural identity.

Rice is a principle crop and major export of many ASEAN countries, including Thailand, which is the

355 World Bank, cited in National Intelligence Council (2008): Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, Washington: US Government Printing Office

356 FAO (2006): State of World Aquaculture

world’s number 1 exporter of rice and contributes around 10 million tons of the annual 30 million tons of international rice trade. Rice is also a staple food of the ASEAN diet. Worryingly for the ASEAN population, rice is an extremely thirsty crop — 1 kg of rice grown in pad-dies requires 1,900 litres of water whereas the produc-tion of 1 kg of potatoes requires just 500 litres of water.

Rice is also the most sensitive of the major cereals to salinity ³⁵⁷ and extreme temperatures and humidity. ³⁵⁸ In addition primary rock phosphate reserves in the region that are a crucial determinant of crop yields are pre-dicted to be exhausted by the end of the 21st century if current trends continue. ³⁵⁹

The Pacific positioning and level topology of the ASEAN region renders crops vulnerable to variations in typhoons and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ³⁶⁰ dynamics, increased flooding, increased salinity, and long droughts which increase the risk of forest fires. Wa-terlogging and flooding is also exacerbated by the poor soil quality in the region, which has been categorised by UNEP as Degraded or Very Degraded. ³⁶¹ Global food production and agriculture is also a major contributor to global warming — accounting for up to 32 % of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, with a particularly large share of nitrous oxide (owing to fertilizer use) and methane (particularly from livestock). ³⁶² Rising affluence amongst the middle classes in the ASEAN region is as-sociated with changes in food consumption patterns, notably towards diets that are richer in meat, dairy, and seafood. ³⁶³ To add to these problems postharvest food losses are high at an estimated 10–40 %. ³⁶⁴

Case Study 6: International Rice Research Institute The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the

Philippines is part of the Consultative Group on

Philippines is part of the Consultative Group on

Im Dokument Spotlight on: Science and Technology Cooperation Between Southeast Asia and Europe (Seite 79-82)