Extreme weather costs China billions each year

BEIJING, Nov 9: Droughts, floods and otherweather disasters stunt China's economy by up to 6 per cent every year, the country's chief meteorologist said today, warning of the potential costs of global warming for the Asian boom economy.

''Meteorological disasters take about 3 to 6 per cent off China's GDP every year,'' Qin Dahe, director of the China Meteorological Administration, told reporters at a conference in Beijing today.

''We have to consider the effects of global warming on the natural and economic systems.'' Beijing is the world's number two producer of greenhouse gases but has kept a low profile in international efforts to tackle emissions -- a stance the EU's top environment official said he hoped would change.

''It is absolutely clear the Chinese government is intent on ulling its weight internationally and our firm hope is that they will start doing it on this particular issue,'' Mogens Peter Carl, director general of the European Union's environment division, told journalists on a visit to the Chinese capital.

Last year, China's gross domestic product hit 18.32 trillion yuan, or 2.32 trillion dollars, meaning that at current levels extreme weather costs China between billion and 0 billion a year, according to Qin's estimate.

Qin, who is a senior member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is examining global warming and will deliver its next report in early 2007, said his estimate was based on estimated losses to farming and other sensitive sectors.

Chinese scientists have produced no overall assessment of the potential economic impact of global warming.

PUBLIC AWARENESS KEY

This summer China was pummelled by typhoons and floods along its coast and by drought in western provinces, but public awareness of global warming and its possible toll on the country's already fragile ecosystem is limited. However Carl said he expected concerns to grow, and to boost pressure on Beijing to act.

''It may take a little more time here than elsewhere, but I am optimistic because I have seen the extraordinary speed with which public opinion in India has woken up to this,'' Carl said.

Scientists say it is impossible to draw a direct link between any one of these ''extreme events'' and rising average temperatures.

But Gordon McBean, a climate expert at the University of Western Ontario, said in Beijing that he and other scientists were sure that continued global warming would lead to an overall increase in such disasters.

VOLUNTARY CAPS

A UN conference in Nairobi is working to fix long-term rules to fight global warming beyond 2012, when the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol -- which calls for industrialised nations to put emissions back to below 1990 levels -- run out.

China has resisted calls for a cap even on emissions growth, arguing that most carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere was produced by developed nations as they industrialised, and they have no right to deny the same economic growth to others.

This fuelled a stand-off with the United States, which President George W. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, saying the plan would threaten U.S. jobs and wrongly omitted poor nations from a first set of targets.

Many activists worry that unless the two governments can reach a compromise, many wavering countries will be unwilling to sign up to a post-2012 regime. Carl said Europe hoped for at least a pledge of good intentions from Beijing.

''We are not looking for a legally binding commitment,'' Carl said. ''We are looking for a voluntary decision, an autonomous decision by the Chinese government to go down this route.''

REUTERS