THE HEAD FOUNDATION DIGEST ISSUE 6 / JUN 2020

Climate Change:
A Looming Threat
to Southeast Asia’s
Water-Food-Energy
FutureInterview withProf. Anu Ramaswamiof Princeton UniversityConfronting theGlobal Housing Crisis

TH I N K
SUSTAINABILITY
IN A TIME OF CRISISMCI (P) 031/05/2020

I N FOCUS
HE XIAOGANG is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow of the "Water inthe West” programme at Stanford University, and he will join theDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National
University of Singapore in July 2020. Xiaogang is a Princetontrained Ph.D. Hydrologist with experience in economics, machinelearning and environmental policy. His research interests focus on
the fundamental understanding of how climate change, variability
and human interventions affect drought and flood risk across scales,
and how to implement an integrative framework to reduce theirsocietal impact. He received his M.A. in Civil and Environmental

Engineering from Princeton University; M.E. in Civil Engineering fromthe University of Tokyo; B.Eng in Hydraulic Engineering and B.Sc
(School of Economics and Management) from Tsinghua University.
Xiaogang has received a number of accolades, including the Science,
Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) fellowship from theWoodrow Wilson School, Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars(PECS) from the Princeton Environmental Institute, and the Young
Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) fellowship from the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

HE XIAOGANG

Climate Change:
A Looming Threat
to Southeast Asia’s
Water-Food-EnergyFuture

Nonthaburi, Thailand
In 2011, Thailand experienced theworst flood in half a century. In orderto reduce the risk of future flooding,
the Thai government has createda water management programme,including building dams in fourbasins in the northern region, andconstructing floodways and flood
diversion channels.

S

outheast Asia is a global
hotspot for climate change andis facing unprecedented challenges
towards a secure and sustainable
water, food and energy future.
More than 660 million people
currently live in this area. The
population is projected to increase
to 760 million in 2050, with 65% of
the total population concentrated
in urban areas and along lowlying coasts. This makes Southeast
Asia particularly vulnerable toglobal warming-associated natural
disasters, including rising sea
levels, intensified typhoons andtsunamis, destructive floods,parching droughts, and oppressive
heat waves.

Consequently, four countries in this area –Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand– are on the list of the world’s top ten mostclimate-affected countries for the period
between 1997 and 2016, according to the Global
Climate Risk Index (Eckstein et al., 2018). Thesecountries are also frequently appearing in global
headlines. For example, a severe drought hit
Thailand in 2010 and caused USD450 million
in crop damages. On the heels of this drought,
Thailand experienced unprecedented floods
in 2011, resulting in USD43 billion of economic
losses and USD16 billion of insurance losses.
More recently in 2016, Thailand experienced
record-breaking dry and hot conditions, with acompounding impact on agricultural production(e.g. crop failure), human health (e.g. heatstroke), and energy consumption (e.g. increased
electricity use).
Scientific literature has demonstrated thatevents with such severity would not haveoccurred without the impact of climate change(Christidis et al., 2018), and the risk of similar
compounding dry-hot weather has increasedover this historical period (Hao et al., 2018).
This has manifested in Indonesia, where there
is increasing evidence that the 2015 summer
droughts and heat waves have become more
frequent because of a warming climate (King etal., 2018). These climate extremes in Indonesia
not only caused crop failures and reductions
in hydropower production at a local scale, butalso affected its neighbouring countries throughwildfires that even caused smog and haze toreach Singapore.

TH I N K J U N 2020 13

In general, climate change has direct and indirect
impacts on intertwined water-food-energy
security through changes in the hydrologicalcycle, and it is manifested by extreme events
such as droughts, floods, heat waves, wildfires,and many others. The impact of climate change
not only depends on the hazard characteristics(e.g. severity, frequency), but also on thevulnerability (the propensity to suffer adverseeffects) and exposure (the footprint being
adversely affected) of the region. Southeast Asia
is a hot spot exposed to such extremes becauseof the strong variability of the monsoon climate
and the high population density with relatively
low adaptation capacities. Although water-foodenergy insecurity tends to have the largest socialand economic impacts on a local scale, suchimpacts can extend to other regions because of
the geographical proximity and the increased
interconnectedness due to globalisation (forexample, through international agriculturaltrade). Below is a brief summary of the main
impacts of climate change on Southeast Asia’s
water-food-energy sectors.

By the 2050s, evenwhile on a sustainable
development path, one outof five people in Southeast
Asia will still be waterinsecure.

Typhoon Haiyan destroyedcountless homes, flooded
cities and towns and left morethan 4,000 people dead and1,100 missing after hitting thecountry in November 2013.

WATER SECURITY
Water security is a multifaceted concept andinvolves both quantity and quality of water
available. This article focuses on water quantity,and briefly talks about how climate change canaffect both the supply side – water availability– and the demand side – water usage – of thewater security equation. Given the tropicalclimate of Southeast Asia, water supply islargely associated with monsoon rainfall, thevariability and distribution of which are alreadyaffected by the intensified hydrological cycle
because of the warming climate. This has been
observed over the low latitude countries, whereextreme rainfall has become more frequent andintense in rainy seasons, leading to floods, andreduced rainfall causing prolonged droughts indry seasons. Such extreme events and the rapid
swings between them pose a substantial risk
for water management practices, especially forreservoir operations as there exists a trade-off
between short-term flood-control and long-termwater storage imperatives to meet water supply
requirements. In addition to monsoon rainfall,
Himalayan glaciers and mountain snowpacks
supply water to millions of people in Southeast
Asia through three major rivers, the Irrawaddy,
Mekong, and the Salween, the flow patterns ofwhich will be significantly altered because of
the high sensitivity of glaciers and snowmelt toVillage of Kradenan,
Central Java, Indonesia
Residents take murky water from a wellmade in the middle of a dried-up reservoirfor daily use.

14 TH I N K J U N 2020

Tacloban City, Philippines

rising temperatures. Feeding these mechanisms
into physically-based models and looking into
the future, all countries in Southeast Asia will
experience reductions in per capita water
availability because of climate change and rapid
population growth (Satoh et al., 2017).
On the demand side, there is a trend of growing
total water demand over the entire Southeast
Asia, driven by increased water use in industrial,municipal, and agricultural sectors. At thecountry level, this trend is most prevalent inIndonesia. This is because growing income
rates along with rapid urbanisation and overall
heightened energy use cause a large increase inper capita water use. Water scarcity estimates
can be made by comparing the differences
between water demand or withdrawal, andwater supply. Between 2006 and 2015, 65 million
people (11% of total population) in Southeast
Asia were exposed to severe water stress. This
number is expected to increase to 127 million
by the 2050s (Satoh et al., 2017). At that time,even while on a sustainable development path,one out of five people in Southeast Asia will still
be water insecure. Avoiding such a situation
will require reconciliation of water demand andsupply, and better management of the trade-offs
between different sectors.

The reliability andavailability of renewables
could be aﬀected by longterm climate change.
ENERGY SECURITY
Based on the latest Energy Outlook fromthe International Energy Agency (IEA), 45
million people in Southeast Asia were living indarkness in 2019 (Birol et al., 2019). Ensuring
electricity access is a key aspect of energy
security but will be challenging given the rapid
growth in energy demand (66% increase by2040), and the commitment to reduce fossil
fuel energy production to meet the emission
goals of the Paris Agreement. To address thesechallenges, Southeast Asia is planning to add
more renewables to its energy production
portfolios. However, the reliability and availabilityof renewables could be affected by long-termclimate change. Currently, Southeast Asia’s totalenergy production is 24% renewables, where
18% comes from hydropower and is mostly led byVietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia (IEA, 2019). TheTH I N K J U N 2020 15

problem is that hydropower generation is vulnerable to droughts
because of evaporative loss in reservoirs and reduced effective
generating capacity due to water shortages. This can be seenin the historical 1997-1998 drought, which reduced hydropower
generation in Vietnam by approximately 20% (Shadman et al.,2016). Potential drought-caused reduction of hydropower will be
more significant in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines because
these countries have large numbers of planned micro-hydropower
plants, which are more sensitive to increased temperaturescompared to large hydropower plants.

Nusa Penida, Bali, Indonesia
Indonesian farmers grow seaweedusing a traditional method. It takes 15
to 30 days for seaweed to grow during
low tide. It has recently been found that
seaweed farming could be a powerful
new tool to sequester carbon andoffset greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the fast growth in renewables, fossil fuel power plants
still dominate the energy production landscape in SoutheastAsia. Heightened temperatures due to global warming canreduce the performance of thermoelectric power plants,
thereby affecting production efficiency. Also, the projection of
more frequent droughts will put additional pressure on coolingwater demand because of reduced water availability. This is likely
to exacerbate the conflicts between energy generation and foodproduction, for instance, whether water should be allocated forhydropower production or for downstream irrigation purposes toensure food security.

In addition to droughts, energy security isjeopardised by other types of climate extremes
such as floods, heavy storms, strong winds
and wildfires, which disrupt transmission lines
and cause power outages. These short-termseasonal shocks increase the volatility ofelectricity prices and disproportionately affectcommunities with different coping capacities,
especially vulnerable communities such as theelderly, hospital patients, and lower-income
households. These communities’ electricity
demand for cooling purposes and medical care
may be the most urgent but they have fewer
resources to bear the burden of increased
energy costs.

FOOD SECURITY
Food insecurity is prevalent in Southeast Asia.
In 2018, the number of people experiencing
moderate or severe food insecurity in thisregion was about 134 million (FAO, 2019).
Among those people, approximately 61 million
are undernourished and are mainly low-income
households in Indonesia, Myanmar, and thePhilippines. Because of the tropical climate of
the region, most staple crop production (e.g.
55% of total rice production) is rain-fed andtherefore particularly vulnerable to climatechange-induced precipitation changes (e.g.
trends and variability). In general, climate change
has both short- and long-term effects on foodsecurity. In the short-term, food production
is mainly affected by the climate shocks ofextreme events (e.g. droughts, floods, andheat waves), which can cause crop failures,
lead to production interruptions and reducefood availability. This was reflected during the1998-2002 drought in Cambodia, where riceproduction decreased by 20% (ADB, 2014).

into regionally (e.g. within Southeast Asia) andglobally interconnected food markets, further
threatening the food security of countries like
Singapore, which relies strongly on international
food trade.
There is increasing evidence that the yield ofstaple crops (e.g. rice, maize, and cassava)in Southeast Asia will decline in the long run(OECD, 2017). Compounded with these shortrun climate shocks, this will potentially reduce
farm household income, increase the costof agricultural products, and drive increased
allocation of land towards irrigation-intensive
agriculture in order to buffer the decline ofcrop production from rain-fed agriculture.
Consequently, the heightened irrigation water
demand will increase the conflicts of waterused for other sectors (e.g. energy). Froma health perspective, the warming climate
could reduce farmworkers’ productivity due
to occupational heat stress. Intermixed withincreased healthcare expenditures, this could
reduce the available income that can be spent onfood purchase, which indirectly influences foodsecurity (OECD, 2017).

Environmental
sustainability,transboundary risk
and climate uncertainty
should jointly beconsidered when planningfor future mitigation andadaptation strategies...

In addition to food availability, other aspects offood security, such as food access and stability,
are also directly or indirectly affected by climate
extremes through channels of food trade,markets and policies (He et al., 2019). These
effects are no longer limited to local places
where extreme events occur, but can ripple

TH I N K J U N 2020 17

Khlong Yai Reservoir,
Rayong Province ,Thailand
By conducting risk assessments,
policymakers can determine the potential
severity of drought and flood threats inindividual sub-basins in the region anddevise local measures accordingly.

FORMIDABLE CHALLENGESBUT ENORMOUS OPPORTUNITIES
Besides climate change, there are other factors not covered inthis article that could influence the water-food-energy securityin Southeast Asia. These include dramatic changes in land use
such as deforestation, and intensive human water management
projects such as dam building in the Mekong river. It is also worth
mentioning that environmental sustainability, transboundary
risk and climate uncertainty should jointly be considered whenplanning for future mitigation and adaptation strategies, so that
regional water-food-energy security goals can be achieved in arobust and adaptive way. Given the increased interconnectednessof the water, food, and energy sectors, integrated approaches
across multiple disciplines (e.g. hydrology, climate, economics,
and the social sciences) need to be utilised to minimise tradeoffs and maximise potential synergies. But challenges still exist interms of how to develop a flexible, coherent and policy-relevant
platform that could harness the latest advances in each field,
which are oftentimes scale-dependent and require different typesof datasets (He et al., 2019).

Deforestation in a tropicalrainforest due to illegal logging tocreate palm oil plantations.

18 TH I N K J U N 2020

Fortunately, emerging opportunities exist to aid us towards a
better understanding and predictability of the climate-waterfood-energy relationship, including progress in hyper-resolution
Earth system modelling (e.g. Schneider et al., 2017; Wood et al.,2011), proliferation of geospatial big data from various sources(e.g. Sheffield et al., 2018), and advances in artificial intelligence,
especially deep learning algorithms (e.g. Reichstein et al., 2019),
among many others. By leveraging these opportunities withinterdisciplinary and collaborative efforts, we can transcend
existing norms and frameworks and gain new insights to address
existing and emerging challenges related to water-food-energy
security. These interdisciplinary approaches can also be used
to promote environmental education in the classroom, whereknowledge about the climate, water, food and energy can be
imparted to our youth to transform their thinking for a more
resilient and sustainable future. ∞REFERENCES
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