1. The document discusses energy security in Asia and recommendations from the 2011 Asian Energy Summit.
2. It suggests countries in South Asia and surrounding the Bay of Bengal cooperate on developing energy resources through regional coordination of finances, technology, rules and exploration of deepwater sources.
3. Achieving energy security requires addressing risks related to resource availability, political access, economic costs and environmental impacts through greater regional cooperation and integrated energy markets.
4. Our narrator is a 72-year old (born in
2012) whose health is failing, but who has recognised that
he “may be one of the last historians to have the chance to
capture the effects of the first truly global disaster in human
history”. The date is a nod to Orwell’s dystopian 20th century
classic.
Our fictional narrator has spent several years making contact
with survivors scattered around the world, each recalling the
circumstances that befell them and their communities drawn
from New York city, Miami, Bangladesh, Tuvalu, Rotterdam,
Phoenix, Arizona, Switzerland, India, Pakistan and Canada.
Borrowing a line from Thomas Hobbes, human
existence has once again become “poor, nasty,
brutish and short” – and not just for some.
5. 2084
Looking back at 2012, the year of his birth,
our narrator can see that the scientific
projections were clear, yet societies chose
not to act.
Scientists were partly to blame. Being
largely rational creatures, they “assumed
that reason would prevail and that nations
would agree voluntarily to reduce CO2
emissions”. This allowed them to create
plausible scenarios in which global
average temperature rises were pegged
below the 2C tipping point.
6. Well, the Scientists were wrong. They
were wrong too about just how
sensitive climate feedbacks would
prove. IPCC modelling on the
sensitivity of the world’s glaciers and
the Greenland ice cap to relentless
warming proved hopelessly optimistic.
Mean sea level increases had hit the
one-metre mark by 2083, with
centuries more in store as the global
cryosphere entered its unstoppable
7. 2084
New York, so often the subject of attack by
fictitious phantoms, from Godzilla to King
Kong, finally succumbed to a combination
of rising sea levels and intense storm
surges by mid-century. After a major
storm in 2042, Manhattan was effectively
abandoned, with so much of its
infrastructure destroyed, despite massive
efforts to build sea barriers to protect from
the worst of the storm surges.
8. “Geography is destiny”
Bangladesh : by 2050,the sea-level rose by half a metre
globally.
is a phrase with particular resonance in Bangladesh.
The half-metre global sea level rise by 2050 had led to
the inundation and abandonment of fields as far as
40km from what was the coastline in 2011. With 50
million climate refugees trying to escape, the
international aid agencies had long
abandoned the country, and its neighbour
India built a steel fence to try to keep them
out.
9. 2084
Closer to Europe, the Swiss Alps had lost their last snow
caps by the 2040s, and the Alps were coming to
resemble the Atlas Mountains. Famous ski resorts, such
as Davos, have long been boarded up.
The situation in Spain is much graver. Today’s Gold
Coast is a graveyard of abandoned condos and dry
swimming pools, with daytime temperatures of over
50C. The monoculture of olive trees have long since
dried out and burned. The tomato and lettuce fields of
Murcia are dustbowls, as are the hundreds of long-
abandoned golf courses.In the first decade of the
century, it took an estimated 11,400 litres of pumped
fresh water just to allow one golfer to play a single
round. That madness is beyond imagining in the parched
Spain of the 2050s, which is now simply an extension of
the North African desert.
10. Both Pakistan and India, both bristling with
nuclear warheads and mutual antipathy, were less
fortunate. Declining flows from disappearing glaciers led to
massive tension over access to fresh water, and in May
2048, the conflict ignited a short but deadly nuclear
exchange that led to a military victory of sorts for
India and an estimated 150 million deaths.
In the United States meanwhile, as temperatures made
wheat growing impractical across much of the US’s corn belt,
its eyes turned north, to the vast rolling plains of Canada,
with which it shares a border over 5,000 miles long. Illegal
Americans had been flooding north into Canada, and
conflict flared into full-scale hostilities in 2046,
when the US, claiming to defend its citizens from attack,
crossed the borders in force and quickly disabled Canadian
military capability. Fighting was brief and casualties light. By
2050, Canada had been merged into an extended United States.
11. Paris in July 2084 is 46C in the shade. The
famous sidewalk cafés are gone. People stay indoors.
Even at night, the heat is stifling. Eighty years ago,
southern Europeans feared that hordes of
North African immigrants would overrun them.
It did not occur to them that not only would
the people of North Africa come, they would
bring the climate too.
The UN warned that the 21st century’s
great wars would be fought over water, and in
2028, Israel and Egypt once again went to war
over control of water from the Jordan river.
Syria, Jordon, Lebanon and nuclear-armed Iran
joined the escalating conflict.
12. Pakistan and India, both bristling with nuclear
warheads and mutual antipathy, were less
fortunate. Declining flows from disappearing
glaciers led to massive tension over access to
fresh water, and in May 2048, the conflict
ignited a short but deadly nuclear exchange that
led to a military victory of sorts for India and an
estimated 150 million deaths.
The USA :Meanwhile, as temperatures made wheat
growing impractical across much of the US’s corn belt,
its eyes turned north, to the vast rolling plains of
Canada, with which it shares a border over 5,000 miles
long. Illegal Americans had been flooding north, and
conflict flared into full-scale hostilities in 2046, when the
US, claiming to defend its citizens from attack, crossed
the borders in force and quickly disabled Canadian
military capability. Fighting was brief and casualties light.
By 2050, Canada had been merged into an extended
United States.
13. 2084: My oral history is mercifully light on faux
optimism and predictable take-home lessons.
However, I do manage to sneak in one in the final
paragraph:
“In the first two decades of this century, people and their political
leaders, prodded by the quisling scientists, acted as though they
could enjoy the benefits of modern science while rejecting any
scientific findings that they found inconvenient to their ideology or
their pocketbook. For their folly, we paid a terrible price.”
So I conclude this oral history of
2084 the great global warming by
calling it the ‘century of death’ on health
and food production – both of which went into freefall
as access to energy dwindled and the
wheels fell off the once-mighty chariot of globalisation.
15. My presentation today will
essentially take a look at the key
decisions that were reached during
last year’s IPPAI Summit and then,
based upon those ecommendations,
suggest what the way forward
could possibly be. We hope that
this Second Summit can now make
the move towards operationalising
some of the suggestions made last
year instead of simply making
another set of suggestions
16. The first Asian Energy Summit of 2011, made
several recommendations: –
• Asia needs quality leadership, which would be
dedicated and have a vision to transform and
make path breaking changes.
• Regional power sharing could avoid additional
investment costs separately by each country
and interconnected power system between
Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal could not only
improve networks, but bring about economic
efficiency.
• The five Central Asian economies of
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan need to create an
efficient regional mechanism through conscious
decisions.
17. 4.The Caspian Sea could work as a central
uniting factor.South Asian countries, along
the lines of WTO, could define a set of rules
based on the Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN),
treaties.
5. South Asia could also develop A Union Of
Financial and Technical Coordination to
optimise use of regional resources.
6. Countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal
should invest in deepwater and ultra-
deepwater E& P technologies.
7. Developing Coalbed Methane and Shale gas
should also be considered a possibility. A Bay
of Bengal E & P Community should
concentrate on exploration, production,
transportation and sale of natural gas.
18. 1.South Asian countries, along the lines of
WTO, could define a set of rules based on the
Most-Favoured-Nation(MFN), treaties.
2. South Asia could also develop A Union Of
Financial and Technical Coordination to
optimise use of regional resources.
3. MrParthasarathy this morning referred to
Bimstec as an association of landlocked
nations which could bridge the ASEAN and
South Asian gap.
4.Countries surrounding the Bay of Bengal
should invest in deepwater and ultra-
deepwater E& P technologies. Developing
Coalbed Methane and Shale gas should also
be considered
19. . Energy security cuts across such a
large variety of policy areas that
consensus as to its vital nature often
dissolves into misinterpretation and
competing or redundant policy
initiatives.
At the nexus of energy and national
security, then, we must construct
sustainable, viable, and effective
strategies.A new paradigm of Asian
security is now necessary (Ambassador
Talmiz Ahmed)
20. Greater Mekong cooperation
Bangladesh Sri lanka Nepal integration
process in South Asia
21. Can Business Create A Holistic Integrated Platform
Towards Energy Security (Suhel Seth)
Share resources, develop harmony among
peoples
Trade sees no boundaries=== need and supply
are the basics of trade.
Trade between India and China operates on two
different planes,the Indian plane and the Chinese
plane.THEY SHOULD DEAL WITH EACH OTHER ON
THE SAME PLANE.
India and Pakistan,India and Nepal,India and
Bangladesh,India and Bhutan and India and the
rest of South Asia need to change their perception
and we don’t have the luxury of time (Suhel
Seth).
We should stop surviving from election to
election.Politics has created too many walls.So
train your sights on economic nirvana to break
walls
22. Energy-hungry Asian economies are
highly dependent on imported oil and
gas to fuel economic growth.
In Asia itself, Russia and the Central
Asian states have a significant
proportion of the world's primary
energy resources and are looking for
ways to increase such exports to
expand and diversify into new markets
in Asia and Europe.
23. Providing universal access to
basic energy will require
annual investments of around
$48 billion according to
International Energy Agency
estimates.
ADB has invested
approximately $2.8 billion in
access to energy projects
24. Asia should work towards creating
an integrated and competitive
natural gas market within the
region.
India and China would be the
major energy guzzlers in future so
they should work towards
common goals in areas of
technology development and joint
development of energy assets.
25. In Asia itself, Russia and the Central
Asian states have a significant
proportion of the world's primary
energy resources. But there are,as
pointed out by Amb Parthasararhy this
morning,there are problems of Chinese
attempts at hegemony in the Indo
Pacific region. Problems also are
festering in
Vietnam,Philippines,Malaysia which
need to be sorted out. These problems
will take their own time to sort out.
26. Energy security in the Asian region: How do you
assess risks ?
Different types of risks
4. relating to geological availability,
5. geopolitical accessibility,
6.economic affordability and
7.environmental and social acceptability.
There are two ways in which energy security
could be defined and tackled.
One would be to rank countries, from most to
least secure, define those countries energy
security profiles and then group countries with
similar combinations of risks and resilience
factors. This sort of evaluation would be based