Asia-Pacific, Climate Change, Environment, Headlines

ASIA: Climate Change Puts Mekong Region’s New Species at Risk

Joel Chong

BANGKOK, Sep 25 2009 (IPS) - The rich and unique biodiversity of the Mekong region, which has been discovered only since the recent years, is likely to be put at risk by environmental impacts that climate change is expected to bring, says the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) in a report launched here Friday.

A total of 163 new species have been discovered in the Mekong region – which comprises Cambodia, China, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos – just over the past year.

These include a bird-eating frog, a gecko covered in leopard print, and a new species of banana, according to the WWF report ‘Close Encounters’.

Many of the newly discovered species were "living right under our noses" and already known to local communities, said Stuart Chapman, director of the WWF Greater Mekong Programme. Indeed, scientists worked with local villages to identify species known locally, but not to the global scientific community.

"Some of these areas (where the species are documented) are remote and inaccessible… either due to political instability or the fact that there’s been a lot of mines in certain areas. Now these areas are opening up," said Chapman.

The end of conflict and war in past decades has allowed economic growth and openness to take hold in the region, especially in the past 15 years.

The six countries of the region are also bound by the 4,880-kilometre Mekong River, which stretches from the Tibetan Plateau in China, through Burma, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before it reaches the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and flows out into the South China Sea.

"This river is the second most biodiverse river in the world… second only to the Amazon (river) in terms of fish numbers," Chapman added.

However, the Mekong’s rich biodiversity also makes it highly susceptible to climate fluctuations.

"Some of these new species that have just been found might be at risk…. Rare, threatened and endangered species are an obvious choice because they are already at the brink of extinction," said Geoff Blate, climate change coordinator for the WWF Greater Mekong Programme.

For instance, the leopard gecko, which is found only in low-lying islands that could be inundated if seas continue to rise, is especially at risk due to its geographical location, added Blate. The Bangkok-based South-east Asia START Regional Centre, which has been monitoring climate change impact in the resgion since 1997, reports that the lower Mekong River basin would experience a substantially longer annual hot period and a shorter cool period over the next 10 years.

Rainfall in the region is also expected to increase by 10 to 30 percent. While the effects are far from certain, there have been reports warning of damage to the flood cycles that are key to food security, livelihood and biodiversity in places like the Mekong Delta in Vietnam and the Tonle Sap in Cambodia.

These concerns are among those being highlighted by a series of initiatives and reports by various non-government organisations, development and research agencies in the run-up to the fourth round of global negotiations on climate change that will get underway here next week.

These negotiations, to be held from Sep. 28 to Oct. 9, are expected to tackle key issues ahead of the Copenhagen talks on Dec. 7.

So far, environmental activists say that Mekong governments have yet to push particularly hard for stronger provisions in the negotiations for a stronger global climate change treaty in December.

"The countries from this (Mekong) region besides China have not been very vocal and very visible," said Kathrin Gutmann, head of policy and advocacy at the WWF Global Climate Initiative.

At a special U.N. climate change summit in New York earlier this week, China pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 2020 but gave no figures. Japan, on the other hand, pledged to reduce emissions by 25 percent by 2020, calling it the Hatoyama Initiative, after the newly elected prime minister.

These are below the WWF’s target of 40 percent reduction in carbon emissions by industrialised countries, but Gutmann says that activists know that getting higher commitments from governments is a "high ask".

"There is a great opportunity for Vietnam, Cambodia, for Thailand… to really outline what they want (to happen), and next week (at the Bangkok climate change talks) is a good opportunity to get concrete," she added.

"What makes Bangkok (talks) so important (is that) that they really catch up," Gutmann said. "We need success in Copenhagen."

In December 2008, the WWF released ‘First Contact’, a report that compiled information about more than 1,000 newly identified species from the Mekong region discovered between 1997 and 2007.

Similar studies done for the eastern Himalayas and Borneo during the same period only yielded 300 species for both regions, according to Chapman.