Disaster Risk Resilience: Key to Protecting Vulnerable C ommunities.

Byline: Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana

The past five years have been the hottest on record in Asia and the Pacific. Unprecedented heatwaves have swept across our region, cascading into slow onset disasters such as drought. Yet heat is only part of the picture. Tropical cyclones have struck new, unprepared parts of our region and devastatingly frequent floods have ensued. In Iran, these affected 10 million people this year and displaced 500,000 of which half were children. Bangladesh is experiencing its fourth wave of flooding in 2019.

Last year, the state of Kerala in India faced the worst floods in a century. This is the new climate reality in Asia and the Pacific. The scale of forecast economic losses for the region is sobering. Including slow-onset disasters, average annualised losses until 2030 are set to quadruple to about $675 billion compared to previous estimates.

This represents 2.4 percent of the region's GDP. Economic losses of such magnitude will undermine both economic growth and our region's efforts to reduce poverty and inequality, keeping children out of schools and adults of work. Basic health services will be undermined, crops destroyed and food security jeopardised. If we do not act now, Asia-Pacific's poorest communities will be among the worst affected. Four areas of Asia and the Pacific are particularly impacted, hotspots which combine vulnerability to climate change, poverty and disaster risk.

In transboundary river basins in South and SouthEast Asia such as the GangesBrahmaputra-Meghna river basin, floods alternate with prolonged droughts. In SouthEast Asia and East and NorthEast Asia earthquakes, tsunamis and landslides threaten poor populations in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Intensifying sand and dust storms are blighting East, Central and South-west Asia. Vulnerable populations in Pacific Small Islands Developing States are five times more at risk of disasters than a person in South and South-East Asia. Many countries' sustainable development prospects are now directly dependent on their exposure to natural disasters and their ability to build resilience. Yet this vicious cycle between poverty, inequalities and disasters is not inevitable. It can be broken if an integrated approach is taken to investing in social and disaster resilience policies.

As disasters disproportionately affect the poor, building resilience must include investment in social protection as...