Asian Regional Meeting on El Nino-Related Crises
2-6 February 1998
Bangkok, Thailand

Annex A - Summary of Discussions

The Regional Climate Outlook Forum was convened in Bangkok on 2 February 1998 as a prelude to the Asian Regional Meeting on El Nino Related Crises. The forum formulated a consensus guidance for the February-April 1998 season in Southeast Asia. The following outlook was issued:

"February through April covers much of the dry season in most parts of the Asian tropical monsoon region, with April being the transitional month for the commencement of the summer monsoon. The region from the Philippines, northeastern Kalimantan, northern Sulawesi, most parts of Indochina, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are expected to continue to have below-average precipitation, except for southeastern China and the western part of Sumatra where there is an expectation of above average rainfall.

The precipitation outlook described above is consistent with conditions in Southeast Asia and the Indonesian maritime continent usually associated with the mature phase of a major El Niœo episode."

SUMMARY OF DISCUSSIONS

The meeting had preliminary sessions on the following key strategic issues:

• El Nino forecasting and early warning system;
• Impact assessment including collection and analysis of information on impact of El Nino related extreme climate variability on vulnerable communities;
• Public education and information dissemination; and
• Contingency planning at local, national and regional levels to deal with El Nino related crises.

Four Working Groups were formed to discuss sector specific issues to evolve short term (response) and long term measures to manage El Nino related crises in the following distinct but inter-related sectors:

• Agriculture and Food Security
• Population and Health
• Environment and Natural Resources
• Industry and Economy

The summary of working group recommendations in each of the sector is given below :

1. Agriculture and Food Security

Issues

Despite rapid industrialization in Southeast Asia in the last two decades, agriculture is the dominant sector engaging more than half of the economically active population. The drought conditions arising from a severe El Nino event seriously affect the agriculture sector resulting in the weakening of physical and economic access to food, and endangering household food security for a vast majority of resource poor farmers and economically weaker sections. Forest fires also contribute to food insecurity by affecting forest produce, agriculture-based food production, and employment and income generation opportunities.

Recommendations

Following are the key recommendations made by the Working Group on Agriculture and Food Security:

• Forecasting on inter-annual climatic variation should be complemented with capacity for forecasting on intra-seasonal variations.
• Criteria for early warning should extend to cover rainfall distribution, regional temperature variations and soil conditions.
• Capacity building programs should be undertaken for those countries that do not have well-developed early warning systems, impact assessment tools and procedures, contingency planning arrangements and institutional arrangements for ensuring food security.
• Regional collaboration should be institutionalized for impact assessment.
• Institutional arrangements should be put in place to ensure information exchange among farmers, local governments, national policy and planning agencies and climate scientists. These information systems should have a distinct component to encourage bottom-up (farmer to local government to provincial government to national agency/ climate scientists) information flow.
• The introduction of drought resistant crops should be based on incentives and not on regulatory arrangements.
• Protection of watersheds against environmental degradation should be given high priority.
• The countries in the region should endeavor to improve the irrigation efficiency by at least 25%.
• The design and location of specific water harvesting and management systems should be carried out by local users through well defined conflict resolution mechanisms. In this process, due consideration should be given to the water rights of various local user groups.
• Legume crops should be introduced in rice mono-cropping systems to improve soil fertility and rice yields.
• Action research program need to be undertaken for assessing farmersØ response to drought.
• Regional institutional arrangements should be established for sharing best practices.

2. Population and Health

Issues

Extreme climate events affect human health through three interconnected ways:

• by distribution and quality of surface water;
• through life cycle of disease vectors and host°vector relationships; and
• through ecosystem dynamics of predator/ prey relationships which control populations of disease vectors.

New developments in climate forecasting can help in enhancing the capability of monitoring and surveillance systems and thus provide a basis for more proactive approach towards control and prevention of the spread of human diseases. The main problem areas identified are infectious diseases, respiratory diseases, and malnutrition and under-nutrition.

Recommendations

The key intervention in this area should be the institutionalization of standardized impact assessment and surveillance systems. This should be complemented with public education and awareness generation campaigns to promote preventive and control measures.

3. Environment and Natural Resources

Issues

El Nino can have a range of direct and indirect impacts on the environment and natural resources including forest fires, air pollution, ground water depletion etc. For example: El Nino-induced dry spells cause dropping of leaves from evergreen trees resulting in build up of dry foliage on the forest floor. As a result, the forest fires triggered by various means spread fast, affecting larger areas during El Nino impact period. The resulting haze and air pollution may cause serious health problems in habitations around the forest fire affected region. Similarly, over exploitation of groundwater sources during El Nino impact period causes deterioration of groundwater due to salinity ingress.

Recommendations

The impact assessment procedures should capture impacts of El Nino on air/ atmosphere, water quantity, water quality, soil/ minerals, forests, wildlife, fisheries and coastal ecosystems. These assessments should explore possibilities of measuring the direct and indirect costs. Intervention measures should be based on a clear understanding of the short- and long-term implications of El Nino.

4. Industry and Economy

Issues

The immediate shock of monsoon failure is first experienced in the primary (agriculture) sector of the economy. However, the indirect effects may extend to secondary (industry) and tertiary (service) sectors of the economy through one or more major routes, namely:

• A backward linkage in the shortage of raw materials supply for agro-based industry;
• A forward linkage in the reduced demand for industrial products because of reduced agricultural incomes;
• A shift in the share of consumer demand away from industrial products because of higher costs of food and other agro-based necessities with a low elasticity of demand;
• A potential shift in public sector resource allocation away from investment expenditure in order to finance El Nino counter measures;
• The import of oil or other energy sources to compensate El Nino-induced hydro power; and
• The additional import of agricultural commodities to meet food and industrial needs which in turn affects the overall balance of trade payments.

Recommendations

Following are the key recommendations made by the Working Group on Industry and Economy:

• There should be a greater thrust on scientific and technical research to better understand the macroeconomic implications of climate variability. The impact of climate variability on various sectors of the economy should be documented and analyzed.
• The research findings should be disseminated to the economic and business decision-makers in order to facilitate better economic and financial risk management.
• The concepts of disaster prevention should form an integral part of economic development planning.
• National and provincial governments should explore the use of well-designed policy instruments to manage economy-wide risks as a result of climate variability.
• There should be greater international cooperation in understanding and managing the adverse impacts of climate variability on national and provincial economies.

RESULTS OF THE MEETING

The Meeting delineated the following guiding principles:

• The effects of climate variations can be significantly mitigated and the positive aspects can be capitalized upon;
• There is an urgent need to interface -problems of vulnerability to climate variations; and
• The pertinent information must be provided to the affected and most vulnerable communities in a usable form.

The Meeting identified the following key action areas towards building regional capacities. There is a need to :

• develop a regional capability to produce climate information guidance;
• disseminate information on potential impacts on key sectors such as Agriculture and Food Security, Environment and Natural Resources, Population and Public Health and Industry and Economy;
• coordinate various regional initiatives;
• promote and strengthen the use of existing technical capacities in the region;
• strengthen capacities of governments and institution to respond; and
• share best practices.

In light of the above, the Meeting called upon National Governments, Regional and International organizations to:

• formally acknowledge the value of long-lead forecasts in alleviating social and economic costs related to climate variations;
• issue a mandate to establish an integrated regional climate information system; and
• commit to provide the political and financial support necessary to establish such a system.

To achieve these ends, the Asian Regional Meeting on El Nino Related Crises nominated the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center to conduct the following activities:

• Establish a regional forum of climate experts (national, regional and international) to engage in on-going dialogue to provide climate guidance to the countries of the region; and
• Establish a Regional Strategic Planning Committee on Climate Impact representative of key stakeholder groups in the region.