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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: Freepik/Rawpixel.com Blog

Drought is a slow-onset disaster that causes significant damage to the environment.  Unlike most other natural hazards, the effects of drought often accumulate slowly over an extended period…

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…

Op-ed

South-East Asia has long endured severe droughts, which occur on average every five years. The prolonged 2015 and 2018 droughts were the worst on record for two decades. They simultaneously affected…

UN News / WB State Inter Agency Group on Disaster Management Blog

“We have to learn from COVID… We can’t wish away systemic risk. It’s much much cheaper, much more effective to invest upfront in order to avoid disaster and so it is with climate change – a crisis…

Unsplash / Macau Photo Agency Blog

“Act decisively and early to prevent the further spread or quickly suppress the transmission of COVID-19 and save lives” is the first strategic objective of the UN framework on responding to the…