ABSTRACT
The Asia-Pacific region consists of about one-quarter of the Earth’s surface. This region faces stringent challenges from global climate change (GCC). A large proportion of its people live in Low Elevation Coastal Zones and confront the threat of increasing temperatures, eroding soil, decreasing coastal areas, declining food and water resources, and forced migration. Besides obvious human security challenges, the authors argue in this chapter that state security is also under pressure in terms of loss of livelihoods, due to water scarcity and/or disease outbreaks, forced displacement of people, and concentration of people in areas already under pressure from the scarcity of resources that could result in social tension and/or civil unrest. While some major member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been somewhat more reluctant to address GCC and instead have focused on economic growth, the vast majority of states in the Asia-Pacific region today share a great concern over GCC consequences, with 28 out of 31 states in the Asia-Pacific having ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement.
