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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: Press Information Bureau, Government of India Blog

In July 2024, cascading impacts of multiple landslides in Wayanad, Kerala—a state of India – have killed more than 400 people and resulted in colossal socio-economic impacts. The landslides were…

Photo credit: Adobe Stock Asset/Pema Gyamtsho Story

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…

Photo credit: Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, India Blog

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…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Gagarych Blog

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…

Photo credit: Gorakhpur Environment Action Group Blog

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…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/anil_shakya19 Blog

2023 was the warmest year on record. The latest Copernicus Climate Change Service highlights that February 2023 to January 2024 was the first time that we experienced 12 consecutive months of…

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Piyaset Blog

Based on the current rate of progress in Asia and the Pacific, the Sustainable Development Goals will only be achieved by 2062 – a sobering reminder of how much work remains.  Women and girls…

Photo credit: Nasa Earth Observatory Blog

On 12/13 November 1970, the world’s deadliest tropical cyclone ‘Bhola’ killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh. The hard lesson learnt from ‘Bhola’ was not having an effective cyclone warning…

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The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has launched an innovative resource for governments and stakeholders looking for practical ideas to adopt geospatial…

Photo credit: Wikipedia/Rishabkhetpalia Blog

On 4 October 2023, a cloudburst over Lhonak Lake in North Sikkim  triggered a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the Teesta river basin, which claimed over 30 lives, destroyed the 1,200 MW…

Photo credit: UN in India Blog

The New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration was unanimously adopted during the G20 Leader’s Summit on 9-10 September 2023. It has many takeaways covering a variety of pressing global challenges, including…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Anwarali Kapasi Op-ed

The world faces a disaster emergency, yet nowhere is the threat more immediate than in Asia and the Pacific. Ours is a region where climate change-induced disasters are becoming more frequent and…

Photo credit: World Meteorological Organization/Muhammad Amdad Hossain(Bangladesh) Blog

The last few weeks have seen large scale floodings in southwestern China and northwestern India  including its capital, Delhi. The deluge in China and India is no exception to an emerging trend…

Photo credit: iStockphoto Blog

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are relevant to all countries, whether high, middle or low income. With increasing attention to the SDGs, countries are progressively turning to data as a…

Photo credit: UNICEF/Sultan Mahmud Mukut Blog

On 14 May 2023, cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar. Accompanied by sustained winds of 180-190 km/h and violent gusts, torrential rainfall and flooding, Mocha made the landfall in a context of…

iStockphoto / Ijeab Op-ed

As we reach the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the Asia-Pacific region’s progress and accelerate efforts to achieve our goals.

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,…

UNOCHA/Matteo Minasi Blog

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…