(MENAFN- The Peninsula) By Satish Kanady I The Peninsula
DOHA:The region's non-oil economic sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, infrastructure and tourism, are vulnerable to climate change impacts, like increase in the average temperature, sea level rise and decrease in annual precipitation.
Increasing average temperature combined with a reduction in net precipitation is worsening existing water scarcity issues in the region and is associated fisheries with consequent potential impacts on sensitive sectors such as biodiversity, tourism and agriculture, according to a document released by LSE Middle East Centre.
The region's coastal areas-home to approximately 85 percent of the population and over 90 percent of infrastructure- in addition to fisheries and agricultural areas are highly vulnerable to the combined effects of the sea level rise and hyper-saline coastal waters.
Citing IPCC (Intergovernmental panel on climate change) report, the LSE document, authored by Aisha Al-Sarihi, Research Officer at Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre, said large-scale climate phenomena are influencing regional climates over West Asia indicate that it is very likely that temperatures will continue to increase in the area and the precipitation will diminish overall.
Recent climate change observations over the region confirmed significant mean annual warming trends of 1.03 degree Celsius per decade in Oman, 0.81 degree Celsius per decade in UAE, 0.65 degree Celsius per decade in Qatar and 0.57 degree Celsius in Kuwait per decade for the period 1980-2008.
In some locations, such as Doha, Dubai, Riyadh and Kuwait, the surface temperature over land region is 1.5 to 3.5 times higher than the global land mean surface temperature. The heat waves, which are expected to
begin after 2070, will critically affect the economies of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha and coastal cities in Iran.
'The IPCC study also shows that coastal areas will be extensively inundated due to sea level rise, with projections ranging from 2 to 9 meters by 2100 under various study scenarios. At the same time, the sea is projected to get saltier by up to 20 percent due to the effect of net evaporation and increased rainfall extremes of landfall cyclones on the coasts of the Arabian Sea, the LSE document noted.
In addition to the exposure of the region's non-oil economic sectors to the adverse physical effects of climate change, the oil economic sector is potentially affected by the measures taken in response to it, which mainly put constraints on fossil fuels.
According to 2014 data, non-oil economic sectors contributed less than 60 percent of GDP in all GCC countries, except the UAE and Bahrain. Addressing the impacts of climate change in these sectors is therefore essential in order to improve the sustainability of the GCC's non-oil economies.
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