Skip to main content

Expert Opinions & Stories

Published Date
Search for Expert Opinion

Photo credit: Gorakhpur Environment Action Group Blog

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…

Photo credit: Pexels/Guduru Ajay bhargav Blog

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…

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,…

Photo Credit: UNICEF Pacific Blog

Two destructive Category 4 tropical cyclones, Judy and Kevin, and an earthquake of 6.5 magnitude impacted over 80 per cent of the Vanuatu population from 1 to 3 March 2023. To address this emergency…

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: Shutterstock/wk1003mike Op-ed

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,…

Photo credit: Lim Yong Tick / EyeEm Op-ed

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…

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…

Photo credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider Blog

A person in the Asia-Pacific region is four times more at risk of natural hazards than a person in Africa and sixteen times more than someone in North America or Europe. The “riskscape” of the region…