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Adaptation is rapidly emerging as a critical pathway to safeguard communities and ecosystems from the impacts of climate variability which creates unpredictable challenges that are hard to plan for…

Photo credit: Press Information Bureau, Government of India Blog

In July 2024, cascading impacts of multiple landslides in Wayanad, Kerala—a state of India – have killed more than 400 people and resulted in colossal socio-economic impacts. The landslides were…

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Tshering Wangchuk is no stranger to the challenges of living in a rural community in the mountainous parts of Bhutan. “My place is far away from the capital city Thimphu. There is no road access. We…

Photo credit: Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, India Blog

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…

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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…

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For Ou Sokphanna, who lost her leg to a landmine explosion when she was young, opportunities for income generation have always been limited, with widespread discrimination preventing her from…

Photo credit: ESCAP Photo/Lauren DeCicca Story

33-year-old Rina Akhtar, hailing from Dhaka, Bangladesh, found herself grappling with adversity when her husband deserted her, leaving her to raise their two daughters alone.

Undeterred by the…

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The demand for adopting more inclusive value chains in the private sector is apparent on all fronts. Customers are more mindful of their purchases, with extensive access to product information…

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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…

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2023 was the warmest year on record. The latest Copernicus Climate Change Service highlights that February 2023 to January 2024 was the first time that we experienced 12 consecutive months of…

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On 12/13 November 1970, the world’s deadliest tropical cyclone ‘Bhola’ killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh. The hard lesson learnt from ‘Bhola’ was not having an effective cyclone warning…

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The potential of e-commerce to drive inclusive development has been debated for decades. As far back as 2002, then-United Nations Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan, in the publication titled E-Commerce…

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On 4 October 2023, a cloudburst over Lhonak Lake in North Sikkim  triggered a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) in the Teesta river basin, which claimed over 30 lives, destroyed the 1,200 MW…

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The New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration was unanimously adopted during the G20 Leader’s Summit on 9-10 September 2023. It has many takeaways covering a variety of pressing global challenges, including…

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Gulmira Kuzhagaliyeva, a former senior expert at Qaz-Trade, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Trade and Integration, has been exploring sustainable methods of food packaging and storage in her work  ̶…

Photo credit: World Meteorological Organization/Muhammad Amdad Hossain(Bangladesh) Blog

The last few weeks have seen large scale floodings in southwestern China and northwestern India  including its capital, Delhi. The deluge in China and India is no exception to an emerging trend…

Photo credit: UNICEF/Sultan Mahmud Mukut Blog

On 14 May 2023, cyclone Mocha hit Myanmar. Accompanied by sustained winds of 180-190 km/h and violent gusts, torrential rainfall and flooding, Mocha made the landfall in a context of…

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It is undeniable that the world is rapidly approaching a climate change catastrophe. According to the  Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change …

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To meet the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we will need a vibrant and innovative private sector able to seize opportunities to solving the problems that hamper progress and…

Photo credit: ESCAP Tsunami Trust Fund Blog

When the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami claimed the lives of 230,000 people in a matter of hours, the world realized the gap in preparedness in absence of effective early warning. It was this shared…