Expert Opinions & Stories

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…

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…

As the world is still gearing up to welcome 2024, let us find a moment to reflect on some of the key trends of the past year and pursue now to embrace the path towards hope and promise for everyone,…

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…

Quality infrastructure and investments in priority sectors drive sustainable development  by reducing inequalities and improving access to health, education, public services and income…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Drought is a slow-onset disaster that causes significant damage to the environment.  Unlike most other natural hazards, the effects of drought often accumulate slowly over an extended period…

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…

"The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids -- the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently as floods submerged much…

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 global battle to reduce disaster losses by 2030 will be won or lost in Asia and the Pacific” – Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction.

This…

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…

In 2022, the early onset of heatwaves in South Asia was a unique example of compounding and cascading risks in this interconnected world. Heatwaves that struck India early this year coincided with…