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…

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicator framework has been developed with 231 indicators for global monitoring of the 2030 Agenda. However, the applicability of certain indicators to…

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…

Over four billion people will take to the polls in 2024 as 76 countries are set to hold elections.    In Asia, this includes populous countries such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia,…

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…

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…

Each year, the births of 64 million children under the age of five and deaths of 8.4 million people are invisible to governments in Asia and the Pacific. Most countries in the region are yet to…

“How many people have died from COVID-19?” - this seemingly straightforward question cannot be answered in many countries due to the absence of a complete and well-functioning civil registration…

As we reach the midpoint of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the Asia-Pacific region’s progress and accelerate efforts to achieve our goals.

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Every year, millions of people in Asia and the Pacific die without their deaths being registered. The under-registration of deaths has serious consequences for individuals, families, communities and…

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…

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 Asia-Pacific region is at a crossroads today – to further breakdown or breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future.

Since the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP…

2022 started with an abnormally warm January for North and Central Asia, followed by civil unrest, and the lingering impacts of COVID-19. How the year ahead would look like is still fraught with…

2022 marks the second anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while an end to the pandemic is in sight, it is far from over and the consequences will be felt for decades to come. At the same time,…

Countries in North and Central Asia are increasingly trying to make their energy sectors greener and more sustainable. With stagnating economic growth and climate change on the horizon, countries are…

Most countries in the Asia-Pacific region are on track to reach universal birth registration by 2030: an incredible achievement and a significant milestone in realizing human rights and equality…

North and Central Asia is on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7: affordable and clean energy, based on aggregated data for the whole subregion. However, general statistics may conceal…

The leave-no-one-behind ambition of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has challenged policymakers and statisticians to understand the complexity of sustainable development and the…