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Photo credit: WMO/Helena Mettavainio Blog

On this World Meteorological Day, WMO and ESCAP unpack the 2023 theme: Weather, Climate and Water across Generations – through a series of three opinion pieces focused on the Asia-Pacific region,…

UNOCHA/Matteo Minasi Blog

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…

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…

Photo credit: UNICEF/UN0691098/Sami Malik Blog

"The Pakistani people are facing a monsoon on steroids -- the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently as floods submerged much…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/D.Talukdar Blog

“The global battle to reduce disaster losses by 2030 will be won or lost in Asia and the Pacific” – Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction.

This…

Photo credit: iStockphoto/gdagys Blog

As we inch closer to the 1.5°C target and beyond in this century, the sixth generation of CIMP6 climate models (known as Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6) and the Shared Socio-economic…

UNICEF/Malani Wolfgramm. Blog

On January 14, 2022, the South Pacific experienced the incredible force of the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai. The plume reached 30 kilometers into the stratosphere, and the eruption was…

Op-ed

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 COVID-19 pandemic, with its epicentre now…

Photo Credit: Arnie Chou Blog

As the world enters its second year of living with the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus has shifted from containing the spread of the disease towards recovering from socio-economic disruptions. COVID-19…

shutterstock / arrowsmith2 Blog

In many places around the world, schools are left with deserted classrooms, quiet hallways and empty playgrounds. COVID-19 has forced students and teachers to rapidly adapt to extended school…