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Expert Opinions & Stories
The development paradigm has shifted to ‘digital by default’ as a norm, reshaping societies and economies. As a hub for digitally driven innovations, Asia and the Pacific is well positioned to…
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…
Loss and damage @ COP 29 Baku: 4 key takeaways
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…
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…
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…
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…
Innovation for climate action and inclusivity
Despite efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 on Climate Action has seen an overall regression in progress in Asia and the Pacific. A 2023 ESCAP…
Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the face of climate change, poverty and hunger in the Asia-Pacific region
The unique challenges posed to the Asia-Pacific region in the face of climate change, poverty and hunger are well known. The region plays a significant role in climate action as both the largest…
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…
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…
Unpacking 2023, the warmest year on record
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…
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…
Geospatial solutions for sustainable development
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has launched an innovative resource for governments and stakeholders looking for practical ideas to adopt geospatial…
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…
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…
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…
The world faces a disaster emergency, yet nowhere is the threat more immediate than in Asia and the Pacific. Ours is a region where climate change-induced disasters are becoming more frequent and…
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…
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…
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,…