IMF connects Macau’s future with climate change for the first time
Business in Macau | August 2022 | Special Report | Pigeon ‘ghost’ – 5 years later
Macao people are still unaware of the regional impacts of climate change. More pigeons coming is just one of the expected phenomena.
From the establishment of the Meteorological and Geophysical Service (SMG) in 1952 to 2020, Macau’s average annual temperature increase is about 0.09 degrees Celsius, with 2019 being the warmest with an average temperature of 23.6 degrees Celsius and 2020 being the second warmest. It was a warm year. The average temperature is 23.3°C.
Moreover, according to SMG, May was Macau’s wettest month in 20 years, with each rain test station in the city accumulating a total of over 300mm of rainfall over five days. SMG also highlighted that the rainfall on a given day in May was his heaviest single day in May since 2013.
Analyzing another measure, the number of tropical storms, the annual average number of tropical storms affecting Macau is 5.3, the second highest since the first half of the 21st century. The annual average from 2000 to 2010 was 4.5. Between 2011 and 2021, an average of 5.7 tropical cyclones hit Macau per year.
According to World Bank data, 4 out of 10 people in Macau live less than 5 meters above sea level (compared to 10% in Hong Kong).
In this context, understand the fact that for the first time the IMF has adjusted Macau’s economic outlook not only based on what is happening in the changing gambling, but also on its exposure to climate-related shocks. I can.
While we do not yet have a mechanism that can measure climate risk and translate it into financial risk, we need to address the issue that multiple scholars have called for addressing: the impact of climate change.
“Pigeons broke all historical records in terms of storm surge height and flooded area, but a much worse scenario could have been expected if it occurred at higher tides” – study
A super typhoon with more devastating impacts will occur as the government itself “declares typhoons to be the worst-case scenario and uses them as a reference for designing new engineering measures for coastal protection.” Even with the argument that it’s highly unlikely, according to the authors of “Hado broke all historical records in terms of storm surge height and inundation area, but if it occurred at a higher tide level, it would have been much more dangerous.” Bear in mind that a bad scenario could have been anticipated. Field Survey of Typhoon Hato and Comparison with Storm Surge Model in Macau (2019).
“Long-recurrence-period floods are more likely to encounter short-recurrence-period tides, and long-recurrence-period tides are more likely to encounter short-recurrence-period floods,” said another study, Pearl River’s Hydraulics Laboratory China. suggesting.
Missing Report
In 2015, the Macau Government established an Inter-Ministerial Group on Climate Change.
Its aim was to fulfill the climate change mitigation obligations set out by the United Nations and the Kyoto Protocol.
For a long time, nothing was known about the results of this working group. And about half a year ago, it was reported that it was held seven times, about once a year from 2015 to 2021.
Details of these meetings were not disclosed, but SMG announced that, among other things, the MSAR government was involved in the preparation of the meetings. national communications of the country, Biennial Update Report on China’s Climate Change When Macau Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory.
“In relation to the national goal of combating climate change, the Macau SAR Government has optimized the following overall goals in accordance with its long-term carbon reduction strategy and research scientific evidence on the potential of Macau’s various sectors. reduce emissions and develop a related long-term strategy,” SMG said.
However, reporting on Macau’s climate change mitigation is still lacking.
In one of the rare government interventions on the issue, Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng said last year that Macau will work with the country’s environmental development strategy to strive to peak its carbon footprint by 2030. Stated.
“We will meticulously promote the measures on carbon emission peak and carbon neutralization, take into account the reality of Macau, implement the program according to the program, and use clean energy to reduce the carbon emission. We will strive to reach the peak of 2030,” Ho said.
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