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 pandemic, with its epicentre now in Asia, and all its tragic consequences, has exposed the frailties of human societies in the face of powerful natural forces.

As of mid-August 2021, Asian and Pacific countries had reported 65 million confirmed coronavirus cases and more than 1 million deaths. This is compounded by the extreme climate events which are affecting the entire world. Despite the varying contexts across geographic zones, the climate change connection is evident as floods swept across parts of China, India, and Western Europe, while heatwaves and fires raged in parts of North America, Southern Europe, and Asia.

The human and economic impacts of disasters, including biological ones, and climate change are documented in our 2021 Asia-Pacific Disaster Report, released on 25 August. It demonstrates that climate change is increasing the risk of extreme events like heatwaves, heavy rain and flooding, drought, tropical cyclones, and wildfires. Heat waves and related biological hazards in particular are expected to increase in East and North-East Asia, while South and South-West Asia will encounter intensifying floods and related diseases.

However, over recent decades, fewer people have been dying as a result of other natural hazards such as cyclones or floods. This is partly a consequence of more robust early warning systems and of responsive protection, but also because governments have started to appreciate the importance of dealing with disaster risk in an integrated fashion rather than just responding on a hazard-by-hazard basis.

Nevertheless, there is still much more to be done. As the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated, most countries are still ill-prepared for multiple overlapping crises – which often cascade, with one triggering another. Tropical cyclones, for example, can lead to floods, which lead to disease, which exacerbates poverty. In five hotspots around the region where people are at greatest risk, the human and economic devastation as these shocks intersect and interact highlights dangers to the poor living in several of the region’s extensive river basins.

Disasters threaten not just human lives but also livelihoods. And they are likely to be even more costly in the future as their impacts are exacerbated by climate change. Annual losses from both natural and biological hazards across Asia and the Pacific are estimated at around USD780 billion. In a worst-case climate change scenario, the annual economic losses arising from these cascading risks could rise to $1.3 trillion – equivalent to 4.2 per cent of regional GDP.