00:00COP30 has come and gone without a clear plan to phase out fossil fuels.
00:05And the United Nations says Asia Pacific can no longer wait for global consensus as temperatures climb.
00:12Extreme heat is now the region's fastest-growing climate threat.
00:16Tiziana Bonapest, from the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP,
00:22warns that annual losses could reach half a trillion dollars by 2100,
00:27with the energy sector particularly at risk.
00:33We foresee that certain parts of Asia will experience more than 100 days of such heat and heat extremes in the coming years.
00:51The losses projected to almost 500 billion, which is around 1.1% of regional GDP.
01:03The sectors that are likely to be most affected are both in the urban areas and in the rural areas.
01:14The underlying both the urban and the rural sectors is the energy sector.
01:21And already, you know, at peak heat seasons, many of, you know, Asia's capital cities,
01:30just to mention, too, Delhi and Bangkok, they, you know, heat results in grid capacity being exceeded very quickly.
01:46And, of course, then this goes hand in hand with lower generation efficiency and wastage, you know, of energy.
01:57So, this is, you know, the energy sector is another one of the sectors that will be severely affected without the necessary investments done in a proactive way.
02:15Bonapace also warned that heat waves are shifting from short episodes to chronic, long-duration events,
02:21affecting health, labour, food systems and infrastructure.
02:25She called for stronger regional cooperation, proposing cross-border green cooling corridors as a shared solution.
02:31The proposal is to identify these hotspots and to map out their expansion and then to have countries that operate under a sub-regional cooperation program facilitated by ESCAP,
02:57to have these countries come together and agree on, you know, implementing cooling initiatives.
03:11And primarily, this would consist of planting of trees, planting of trees that are able to withstand drought,
03:20and that generally, you know, would bring a restoration to the degraded land.
03:37And that would also, you know, reduce the extreme heat that will be experienced in the future.
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