Expert Opinions & Stories
2020: The year when crises converged
In 2020, Asia-Pacific saw the collision of climate extremes and COVID-19 transmission create cascading disasters with wide-ranging impacts on sectors, economies, and populations.
The year…
STI based solutions for a resilient future
Science Technology and Innovation (STI) has been at the forefront of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. From enhancing our understanding of virus transmission pathways and the complexity of…
The disaster and health nexus amid the COVID-19 pandemic: challenges of protecting at-risk communities
Asif Ali (name changed) and his wife live with three children in a rural township bordering India and Bangladesh. Asif lost his job as a mechanic when the COVID-19 lockdown forced the closure of a…
A cascade of COVID-19 and climate extremes call for new algorithms to protect at-risk communities
COVID-19 challenges the very fabric of human possibilities, survival and needs while amplifying the impacts of any ongoing crisis, especially the one faced currently by South Asia. Against a backdrop…
The last few months have seen the collisions of COVID-19 with climate extremes. Its impact is potentially inter-generational where poverty, disaster risks and environmental degradation converge,…
Last week saw a ‘crisis on top of a crisis’ in South Asia – the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the region was followed by the most powerful cyclone to strike India and Bangladesh…
Indexing risk to recover from COVID-19
Worldwide, many countries continue to experience an extended period of COVID-19 risks. There are no off-the-shelf solutions for managing such a complex crisis, in which measures to prevent…
Flattening the curve of COVID-19
In Asia and the Pacific, the impact of COVID-19 has been tremendous due to the high concentration of people, economic activities and resource consumption. Coronavirus threatens economic, social and…
The Asia-Pacific region is no stranger to extreme shocks and events, from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2003 SARS outbreak, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the…