ReliefWeb

Summary

Natural hazards have imposed a huge development burden in East and North-East Asia. The subregion was accounted for 29 per cent of all fatalities from disasters and 35 per cent of the people affected in the Asia-Pacific region in the past decade. Moreover, climate change is reshaping its disaster riskscape, and disaster risk from extreme climate events is intensifying in many parts of the subregion. While the total average annual losses (AAL) is estimated at US$499 billion in the current scenario, the estimation increases up to $1,086 billion under the worst-case climate change scenario.

Climate change is also likely to exacerbate interactions between biological and other hazards. This can affect the underlying risk drivers of poverty and inequality, and further interrupt the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the subregion. While countries in East and North-East Asia have already faced the dual challenge of managing natural hazards amid the COVID-19 pandemic, they will face an increasingly complex set of hazards from climate change and climate-related biological hazards.
It is thus essential to ensure that vulnerable populations have sound social protection, before, during and after disasters have hit.

The adaptation cost to climate-related and biological hazards is estimated at less than one-fifth of the AAL, adding to only 1 per cent of the subregional GDP. Thus, economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic should include investing in climate adaptation to build resilient economies and populations to future crises, through making new infrastructure and water management systems more resilient, strengthening early warning systems, improving dryland agriculture, and protecting mangroves. This will help ensure the achievements of the Sustainable Development Goals in East and North-East Asia.

Frontier technologies and digital solutions can greatly support building resilience, for example, to improve risk analytics and impact-based forecasting. While strengthening multi-hazard early warning systems is essential in building resilience to natural hazards, as noted in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, impact-based forecasting can provide valuable information for disaster management agencies, sectoral ministries and other stakeholders for better monitoring and preparation of potential disasters. The utilization of frontier technologies and digital solutions will also require investment in innovation ecosystems that fosters the implementation of resilience-related SDGs.