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Photo credit: Unsplash/Alexandre Debiève Blog

Adaptation is rapidly emerging as a critical pathway to safeguard communities and ecosystems from the impacts of climate variability which creates unpredictable challenges that are hard to plan for…

Photo credit: WMO/Muhammad Amdad Hossain Blog

On this World Meteorological Day, WMO and ESCAP unpack the 2023 theme: Weather, Climate and Water across Generations – through a series of three opinion pieces focused on the Asia-Pacific region,…

Photo credit: WMO/Helena Mettavainio Blog

On this World Meteorological Day, WMO and ESCAP unpack the 2023 theme: Weather, Climate and Water across Generations – through a series of three opinion pieces focused on the Asia-Pacific region,…

Photo Credit: UNICEF Pacific Blog

Two destructive Category 4 tropical cyclones, Judy and Kevin, and an earthquake of 6.5 magnitude impacted over 80 per cent of the Vanuatu population from 1 to 3 March 2023. To address this emergency…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/D.Talukdar Blog

Floods are a recurring phenomenon in Bangladesh and the adjoining state of Assam, India. The ongoing large-scale flooding here is not an exception. Floods often trigger landslides and large-scale…

Photo credit: UNDP/Hira Hashmey Blog

This year, India and Pakistan have recorded their warmest ever March and April. The pre-monsoon period in South Asia is usually marked with excessively high temperatures, especially in May but early…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/gdagys Blog

As we inch closer to the 1.5°C target and beyond in this century, the sixth generation of CIMP6 climate models (known as Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6) and the Shared Socio-economic…

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Przemyslaw Skibinski Blog

The Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) are among the most vulnerable countries in the world to the impacts of climate change. The World Risk Index 2021 ranks several Pacific Island…

Photo credit: iStock/Czgur Blog

Countries in North and Central Asia are increasingly trying to make their energy sectors greener and more sustainable. With stagnating economic growth and climate change on the horizon, countries are…

UNICEF/Malani Wolfgramm. Blog

On January 14, 2022, the South Pacific experienced the incredible force of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai. The plume reached 30 kilometers into the stratosphere, and the eruption was…

Photo credit: istockphoto/tampatra Blog

Even as Asia and the Pacific continues to be the fastest growing region in the world, economic growth has been slowing since the 2008 global financial crisis. Add the COVID-19 pandemic to the mix,…

Photo credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto Blog

In theory, the pandemic created an opportunity for policymakers to recalibrate existing policies and develop new, innovative strategies to mobilize financial resources and drive a green, inclusive,…

Photo credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider Blog

A person in the Asia-Pacific region is four times more at risk of natural hazards than a person in Africa and sixteen times more than someone in North America or Europe. The “riskscape” of the region…

Photo credit: NASA image by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data from University of Maryland’s Global Land Cover Facility Blog

Recent research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has shown that the world is likely to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming much earlier than previously anticipated. The United in…

iStockphoto/Pavel Talashov Blog

North and Central Asia is on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7: affordable and clean energy, based on aggregated data for the whole subregion. However, general statistics may conceal…

Shutterstock/TZIDO SUN Blog

Economic and non-economic shocks such as financial crises, natural disasters, and pandemics leave behind permanent scars in economies and societies and result in major setbacks to development gains…

iStock / metamorworks Blog

Where are we going?

Today this question is often answered with a glance at a smartphone and a whole host of behind-the-scenes geospatial and other data working to provide easy-to-understand…

Shutterstock / Chubykin Arkady Blog

Civilizations in North and Central Asia have ebbed and flowed, along with the river basins that feed and nurture them. Water has always been a key source of livelihood in this subregion, given that…

Unsplash / Dominik Vanyi Blog

The current COVID-19 crisis has shown that governments can act quickly and decisively if needed and collaborate to work collectively. So, why are governments not acting as quickly and decisively in…

ESCAP Photo/ Kibae Park Blog

Asia and the Pacific is lauded globally for its rapid economic growth over recent decades and has lifted 1.1 billion people out of extreme poverty since 1990. Nevertheless, the region continues to…