As the most disaster prone region in the world, building resilience is one of the most important current challenges for Asia and the Pacific. Rapid and uncontrolled urban expansion with poor land use planning and management and environmental degradation, coupled with an ever more complex society having deep interlinkages at the local, national, regional and global levels, have led many policymakers to recognize the need to move away from addressing single issues to treating economic or social sectors holistically.
During the past decade, disasters affected 2.5 million people in Asia‐Pacific and resulted in almost 800,000 deaths. A person living in Asia and the Pacific is almost twice as likely to be affected by a disaster as a person living in Africa, almost six times more likely as a person living in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 30 times more likely than a person living in North America or Europe. This trend is also reflected in the region’s economic losses — in 2011, losses in Asia and the Pacific represented 80 per cent of the global disaster‐related losses, even though the region only generated a quarter of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). This risk will be further aggravated by the impacts of climate change, which is predicted to generate more frequent and extreme disasters. Combined with other shocks, such as financial crises, the development agenda of the region is poised to face serious
compounding challenges with serious development implications.

Studies have indicated that disasters can seriously set back development gains and erode the ability of people to recover from further successive shocks over time and climate change will worsen these existing pressures. One study covering seven Asian countries has indicated that many people already feel the potential impacts of climate change in the form of higher
temperatures, lower rainfall, less predictable weather, an increase in intensity of extreme weather events and droughts, and an increase in insects and pests. Many people are already adapting by supplementing their income with other work, growing alternative crops, changing agricultural practices, migrating and changing jobs1.

The present document explores the issues related to disaster risk reduction and climate change implications for development in Asia and the Pacific. Though the analysis is not exhaustive given the complexity of this issue, options for integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into development will be discussed, along with potential collaborative efforts that countries may benefit from through regional dialogue and cooperation.