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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

Expansion will boost property values— already a major contributor to the
concentration of wealth. This in turn will reinforce the desire of the rich to
maintain their hold on political power and influence in order to defend their
privileged access to scarce resources in a context of increasing competition.

6. The region is not isolated, and will be affected by outside changes
The impact of rising temperatures will be greater nearer the poles.
Northern China is one of the most vulnerable areas. Desertification is already

increasing, and food production declining (UN-IPCC, 2019). There is a massive
project for a “Great Green Wall” (100 billion trees). One of the Chinese population’s
traditional responses to extreme stress is to “go south,” either overland from
Yunnan, or by sea from the coastal ports into the Nanyang. The movement of
Chinese into Mainland Southeast Asia has already increased over the past
two decades, driven mainly by economic opportunity. Climate stress in northern
China may spur this trend, without the additional causation being evident
at all.
Many river deltas in the region are already sinking “as a result of
groundwater withdrawal, floodplain engineering, and trapping of sediments
by dams” (Édes and Gemenne, 2014: 105), and rising sea levels will exaggerate

the impact. The most vulnerable and populous is the delta of the Brahmaputra
in Bangladesh, where tens of millions are at risk, raising the possibility of a
new flow of “boat people” to the Muslim countries of Southeast Asia. Within the
Mekong Delta in Vietnam, a one-meter rise in sea level will flood about 7% of
the country’s agricultural land, and a larger rise will affect 15% of the population
(UN-IPCC, 2014b: 1345).

7. Climate change will have dramatic impacts on politics, both within
and between countries

This is best seen from experience of events already happening elsewhere.
Some studies have argued that climate change has had a role in some major social
and political crises of the world. These studies have become controversial.
And the controversies are very instructive.
In Sudan since the 1990s, researchers argued, droughts caused by climate
change resulted in rising competition over land between farming and grazing
communities, gradually developing into political and ethnic conflict and civil war.

148 Climate Change and Inequality in Southeast Asia:
Review, Prospects, Priorities

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