Expert Opinions & Stories

The Asia-Pacific region is faltering on decades of progress in reducing poverty and hunger. Increasingly, severe climate-related hazards are threatening food security and triggering human…

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…

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…

We are living in an era of a polycrisis: the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency and the Russian invasion of Ukraine continue to send shockwaves through Asia and the…

The recent crises have erased at least one decade of development progress. Why?

The 2023 ESCAP-ADB-UNDP SDG Partnership report explores the impacts of the polycrisis of COVID-19,…

The latest synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes for grim reading: Every fraction of a degree of warming comes with escalated threats, from deadly heatwaves to…

Countries in North and Central Asia are increasingly trying to make their energy sectors greener and more sustainable. With stagnating economic growth and climate change on the horizon, countries are…

In the summer of 2021, record high temperatures scorched Central Asia. Distressing videos and news showed livestock dying on pastures in the western provinces of Kazakhstan due to water shortages and…

In a joint statement, the Executive Secretaries of the United Nations Regional Commissions have called for enhanced regional cooperation to develop nature-based and technological solutions for…

Ending poverty in all its forms is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While significant progress to reduce poverty had been made at the global and regional levels by 2019, the…

North and Central Asia is on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7: affordable and clean energy, based on aggregated data for the whole subregion. However, general statistics may conceal…

The past year is one that few of us will forget. While the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have played out unevenly across Asia and the Pacific, the region has been spared many of the worst effects…

As the people of Kiribati, Samoa and Tonga gear up to welcome 2021 as the first nations to ring in the New Year, communities around the Asia-Pacific region and beyond look forward to bidding farewell…

The Pacific Island Developing State of Vanuatu has emerged as one of the region’s great success stories. Vanuatu has joined the ranks of Samoa and the Maldives as one of only six countries to…

The United Nations 75th anniversary has reminded us of the importance of promoting cooperative “solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems,” as outlined in the UN…

Civilizations in North and Central Asia have ebbed and flowed, along with the river basins that feed and nurture them. Water has always been a key source of livelihood in this subregion, given that…

After decades of impressive growth, for the first time, Southeast Asia is experiencing a drop in measured human development. The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will likely take months…

Developing countries of Asia and the Pacific are experiencing unbalanced tolls of the COVID-19 pandemic. Grim milestones in infections and deaths have left countless devastated. Yet, we must look at…

Our lives are anchored to the ocean in Asia and the Pacific. Yet, if we drift with the currents, we can wave goodbye to the ocean we know and love. Here are five reasons why we need to speed up our…

Structural economic transformation and the expansion of international trade are among the most pressing issues to be addressed, if Asia’s landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) are to overcome the…