Expert Opinions & Stories

Tshering Wangchuk is no stranger to the challenges of living in a rural community in the mountainous parts of Bhutan. “My place is far away from the capital city Thimphu. There is no road access. We…

The summer of 2024 has shattered heat records, starkly illustrating the harsh realities of our warming planet. In India alone, the heatwave has claimed over 100 lives and caused more than 40,000…

Scientific assessments reveal that the Third Pole (TP), encompassing the vast glaciated mountain systems of Asia, is warming at an alarming rate of over 0.3 ºC per decade, surpassing the global…

Stories of growing vulnerability make regular headlines across all Asian and Pacific small island developing States (SIDS). With tens of thousands of people displaced every year due to climate and…

The ESCAP Asia-Pacific SDG Progress Report 2024 flagged the region’s regression on SDG 13, climate action. To reverse this trend, it is imperative that both mitigation and adaptation go hand in hand…

Between 1970 and 2022, disaster events in Asia and the Pacific caused 2.04 million deaths and $2.71 trillion in economic damages. ESCAP estimates that among these totals, tsunamis rank as the third…

In a few days, global leaders will gather at UN headquarters in New York to make certain we recognize the value of water, appreciate its vitality to life and embrace a visionary Water Action Agenda…

Multiple earthquakes, the strongest being of 7.7 magnitude, struck southern Türkiye and northern Syria on 6 February 2023. The earthquake was extremely powerful, and more deadly because it…

Asia and the Pacific is the most digitally divided region of the world, and South-East Asia is the most divided subregion. The Covid-19 pandemic detonated a “digital big bang” that spurred people,…

The Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads today – to further breakdown or breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.

Since the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP…

2022 started with an abnormally warm January for North and Central Asia, followed by civil unrest, and the lingering impacts of COVID-19. How the year ahead would look like is still fraught with…

The Covid-19 crisis has upended lives across the globe, wreaking havoc on economies and societies.

Looking beyond the pandemic, climate change poses the single most important threat to the…

On bikes and on foot, with trikes, pushcarts and more, informal waste pickers are an active and persistent feature of waste management systems across the Asia-Pacific region. Daily waste pickers make…

Not far from downtown Bangkok is the district with the largest number of COVID-19 infections in the latest wave of the pandemic. In April, slum dwellers accounted for two thirds of all infections,…

Air pollution has become a serious environmental and health issue in Thailand. The pollution levels in the country follow predictable patterns, which highlight the presence of a peak pollution season…

In recent years, countries in North and Central Asia have put in place measures to ensure the rights of migrant workers, recognizing their significant contribution to both home and recipient…

“We have to learn from COVID… We can’t wish away systemic risk. It’s much much cheaper, much more effective to invest upfront in order to avoid disaster and so it is with climate change – a crisis…

Our lives are anchored to the ocean in Asia and the Pacific. Yet, if we drift with the currents, we can wave goodbye to the ocean we know and love. Here are five reasons why we need to speed up our…

“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…

Humans are intrinsically connected to the natural environment. This fundamental truth has been neglected by the way we conceive our development choices and we implement policies. The COVID-19…