10.2 Current sensitivity and vulnerability

10.2.1 Asia: regional characteristics

Asia is the most populous continent (Figure 10.1). Its total population in 2002 was reported to be about 3,902 million, of which almost 61% is rural and 38.5% lives within 100 km of the coast (Table 10.1). The coastline of Asia is 283,188 km long (Duedall and Maul, 2005). In this report, Asia is divided into seven sub-regions, namely North Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, Tibetan Plateau, East Asia, South Asia and South-East Asia (for further details on boundaries of these sub-regions see Table 10.5).

Figure 10.1. Location of countries covered under Asia included in this chapter.

North Asia, located in the Boreal climatic zone, is the coldest region of the northern hemisphere in winter (ACIA, 2005). One of the world’s largest and oldest lakes, Baikal, located in this region contains as much as 23,000 km³ of freshwater and holds nearly 20% of the world surface freshwater resources (Izrael and Anokhin, 2000). Central and West Asia include several countries of predominantly arid and semi-arid region. Tibetan Plateau can be divided into the eastern part (forest region), the northern part (open grassland), and the southern and central part (agricultural region). East Asia stretches in the east-west direction to about 5,000 km and in the north-south to about 3,000 km including part of China, Japan and Korea. South Asia is physiographically diverse and ecologically rich in natural and crop-related biodiversity. The region has five of the 20 megacities of the world (UN-HABITAT, 2004). South-East Asia is characterised by tropical rainforest, monsoon climates with high and constant rainfall, heavily-leached soils, and diverse ethnic groups. Table 10.1 lists the key socio-economic and natural resource features of the countries of Asia (WRI, 2003; FAO, 2004a, b, c; World Bank, 2005).