Protecting the vulnerable from disasters

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, slowly leading to disasters such as drought.

Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, they affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000, of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019. Last year, the province of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century.

This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including the slow onset of disasters, average annual losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion, compared with previous estimates. This represents 2.4 percent of the region's GDP.