Bangkok - Developed countries need to implement "deep and early" carbon emissions cuts to avoid more disasters such as Tropical Storm Ketsana, which has killed 274 in Asia, the Philipine delegation at climate change talks said Wednesday. "We ask for deep and early cuts, precisely to moderate the impact of climate change," Heherson Alvarez, chairman of the negotiating team from the Philippines, the country hardest hit by Ketsana, said at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, being held until October 9 in Bangkok.
Speaking on the sidelines of the marathon talks aimed at finalizing a negotiating text for a global climate change deal to be agreed to in December at a Copenhagen summit, the Philippine negotiators used the Ketsana disaster - which submerged more than 90 per cent of metropolitan Manila - to draw world attention to the need for success in the painstakingly slow and bureaucratic process.
"How many Manilas would you like to see before you realize this negotiation is not about numbers, not about targets, but it's about the future?" asked June Yumul, undersecretary for the Philippine delegation.
Ketsana unleashed unprecedented rainfall on Manila and other parts of the Philippines over the weekend, causing floods that have killed at least 246 people and displaced up to 2 million. The storm travelled on to Vietnam Tuesday, where it claimed at least 18 lives, and then to Cambodia, where 10 have died.
The Philippines, a low-lying archipelago nation in the Pacific, has been providing empirical evidence to climate-change naysayers that the phenomenon is upon us.
Alvarez noted that over the past decades, as carbon dioxide has increased steadily in the atmosphere, typhoons hitting the Philippines have grown in intensity from an average of 100 kilometres per hour 30 years ago to 180 kph now.
And more anomalies are apparent. Tropical Storm Ketsana, for instance, had wind speeds of only 85 kph but dumped 410 millimetres of rain, or more than one month's average, on Manila in nine hours.
Alvarez and heads of other delegations representing low-lying island nations are using the Bangkok conference to stress the need for industrialized countries to reduce their carbon emissions by 30 to 40 per cent between 2013 and 2020.
"In the coming five to 10 years as these storms continue to escalate, we will have been ruined even before carbon emissions have peaked in the atmosphere," Alvarez warned at a press conference.
Meanwhile, back in his home country, authorities on Wednesday stepped up relief efforts, clearing roads, transporting aid and dispatching teams to try to reach areas in Manila and surrounding provinces that were still inundated.
"We will bring some water, food and medicines to these affected areas," Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said.
Forty-two people were still missing in the wake of the worst flooding in Manila and surrounding provinces in more than 40 years, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said. Damage to property and agriculture was estimated at 4.8 billion pesos (102 million dollars).
The Philippines was also bracing for a new storm that could hit early next week. Storm Parma, packing maximum winds of 75 kilometres per hour, was moving from the country's south-east coast.
In Vietnam, train and road traffic between northern and southern Vietnam was halted by Ketsana's heavy rains and flooding, which isolated many areas, including the commune of Thach An in the central province of Quang Ngai, where rising waters threatened to sweep nearly 2,000 people away.
The news website VietnamNet reported hundreds of fishing boats in Quang Ngai had sunk. Vietnam's only oil refinery at Dung Quat, which began operations this summer, also suffered damage.
Ketsana, the strongest storm to hit Vietnam so far this year, struck just after other rainstorms caused four days of flooding that killed at least 17 people and left six missing.
In Cambodia, Ketsana on Wednesday was drenching the tourist draw of Siem Reap, home to the temples of Angkor, after killing 10 people overnight in Kampong Thom province north of Phnom Penh and the north-eastern province of Ratanakkiri, Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said.
