Walden Bello
Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Walden Bello is a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines and a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.FPIF
This past month was the hottest July in the United States ever
recorded. In India, the monsoon rains are long delayed, resulting in the
country’s second drought in four years. Triple-digit temperatures in
New Delhi and other cities have already provoked the worst power outages
in the country’s history and the expected bad harvest is likely to
slice at least 5 percent from GDP growth.
In Beijing, which usually suffers from a shortage of water, a storm
on July 21 resulted in the worst flooding since recordkeeping began in
1951, according to the Economist. Meanwhile, here in the
Philippines, a protracted, weeklong rainstorm plunged Metropolitan
Manila into a watery disaster that is probably the worst in recent
history.
If there is any doubt that the abnormal is now the norm, remember
that this is shaping up to be the second straight year that nonstop
rains have wreaked havoc in Southeast Asia. Last year, the monsoon
season brought about the worst flooding in Thailand’s history, with
waters engulfing Bangkok and affecting over 14 million people, damaging
nearly 7,000 square miles of agricultural land, disrupting global supply
chains, and bringing about what the World Bank estimated to be the
world’s fourth costliest disaster ever.
