Urbanization in Asia

Human societies have always been climate dependent, but we are only now coming to grips with the fact that our climate also depends on us. As the second decade of the 21st century gets underway, we now recognize that we are faced with two challenges created by our ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. First, the atmosphere is warming, setting the stage for a host of problems from droughts, extreme weather events, coastal erosion and inundation, to which we have to adapt. And second, we must begin implementing strategies to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the scale of these impacts while putting in place corresponding adaptation measures.

These challenges are particularly problematic for countries and economies in the Asia Pacific. On the one hand, the region is slated to face some of the greatest climate related impacts relative to other regions of the world. On the other, developing economies in the region will see substantial expansions of their middle classes and the greenhouse gas emissions their lifestyles generate.

The future scenario(s) aimed to illustrate how social, economical and political demand could be harnessed to move the Asia Pacific along a path toward putting far less carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. Science and technology development, including technology transfer, that respond to such demand was seen a key driver of this transition and thus was a major focus of the project. The future scenarios and policy recommendations developed from this project were meant to reflect the economic and social conditions among APEC economies and be consistent with their common but differentiated responsibilities and capabilities. While the project’s main focus was on longer-term perspectives, recommendations were to be developed for APEC and member economies that spell out short-term actions that could be taken to more quickly reduce the region’s carbon
footprint.

This 2012 publication was written by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) as part of the organization’s Global Aging Preparedness Project. Authors Richard Jackson, Neil Howe, and Tobias Peter present the results of a survey CSIS conducted in China, Hong Kong SAR, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan to better understand the future of retirement in emerging East Asia from the perspective of the workers and retirees themselves.

An additional 3 billion Asians could enjoy living standards similar to those in Europe today, and the region could account for over half of global output by the middle of this century, says this ADB report. This potentially promising future for the region sometimes referred to as the "Asian Century" though plausible, is by no means preordained.

This study is aimed at senior policy makers, top business leaders and key opinion makers within Asia to help forge a consensus on a vision of and strategy for Asia’s potentially historic rise among the global community of nations between now and 2050. The study offers a long-term perspective of the Asia region as a whole as opposed to the more common approach that delivers a short- to medium-term perspective of selected countries, subregions or issues.