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Expert Opinions & Stories
2020: The year when crises converged
In 2020, Asia-Pacific saw the collision of climate extremes and COVID-19 transmission create cascading disasters with wide-ranging impacts on sectors, economies, and populations.
The year…
STI based solutions for a resilient future
Science Technology and Innovation (STI) has been at the forefront of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. From enhancing our understanding of virus transmission pathways and the complexity of…
The disaster and health nexus amid the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges of protecting at-risk communities
Asif Ali (name changed) and his wife live with three children in a rural township bordering India and Bangladesh. Asif lost his job as a mechanic when the COVID-19 lockdown forced the closure of a…
A cascade of COVID-19 and climate extremes call for new algorithms to protect at-risk communities
COVID-19 challenges the very fabric of human possibilities, survival and needs while amplifying the impacts of any ongoing crisis, especially the one faced currently by South Asia. Against a backdrop…
Expanding infrastructure networks and leveraging on technology innovations to mitigate COVID-19 impacts
The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented changes to the way we lead our lives and our reliance on ICT connectivity has grown even faster than before. However, the region is also one of the…
The last few months have seen the collisions of COVID-19 with climate extremes. Its impact is potentially inter-generational where poverty, disaster risks and environmental degradation converge,…
Last week saw a ‘crisis on top of a crisis’ in South Asia – the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region was followed by the most powerful cyclone to strike India and Bangladesh…
Indexing risk to recover from COVID-19
Worldwide, many countries continue to experience an extended period of COVID-19 risks. There are no off-the-shelf solutions for managing such a complex crisis, in which measures to prevent…
Around the world, the lockdown measures to contain COVID-19 have led to economic contraction and a significant drop in energy consumption including electricity, gas and oil. CEOs, experts and…
“Act decisively and early to prevent the further spread or quickly suppress the transmission of COVID-19 and save lives” is the first strategic objective of the UN framework on responding to the…
The Asia-Pacific region is no stranger to extreme shocks and events, from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2003 SARS outbreak, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the…