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Expert Opinions & Stories
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…
We are living in an era of a polycrisis: the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency and the Russian invasion of Ukraine continue to send shockwaves through Asia and the…
The recent crises have erased at least one decade of development progress. Why?
The 2023 ESCAP-ADB-UNDP SDG Partnership report explores the impacts of the polycrisis of COVID-19,…
The latest synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes for grim reading: Every fraction of a degree of warming comes with escalated threats, from deadly heatwaves to…
The Asia-Pacific Riskscape: How do the changes in weather, climate and water impact our lives?
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,…
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…
Early onset of heatwaves in South Asia calls for a sub-regional action pathway of climate resilience
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…
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…
Strengthening resilience and raising climate ambition key for Asian and Pacific countries at COP26
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…
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…
Scale up carbon dioxide removal to achieve climate targets, urge United Nations regional leaders
In a joint statement, the Executive Secretaries of the United Nations Regional Commissions have called for enhanced regional cooperation to develop nature-based and technological solutions for…
Resilience in a riskier world
Over the past two decades, the Asia-Pacific region has made remarkable progress in managing disaster risk. But countries can never let down their guard. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its epicentre now…
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…
The past year is one that few of us will forget. While the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have played out unevenly across Asia and the Pacific, the region has been spared many of the worst effects…
South-East Asia has long endured severe droughts, which occur on average every five years. The prolonged 2015 and 2018 droughts were the worst on record for two decades. They simultaneously affected…
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…
Agriculture water use in North and Central Asia
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…
Asia’s Landlocked: Tackling Development Challenges through Structural Transformation and Trade
Structural economic transformation and the expansion of international trade are among the most pressing issues to be addressed, if Asia’s landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are to overcome the…