Sectors and Issues

ThemeStudy2013-full.pdf

The report “Building Resilience to Natural Disasters and Major Economic Crises” will be launched at the 69th session of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Asia and the Pacific is the most disaster-prone region of the world. Almost two million people were killed by disasters in the region between 1970 and 2011, representing 75 per cent of global disaster fatalities. A person living in Asia and the Pacific is four times more likely to be affected by natural disasters than someone living in Africa, and 25 times more likely than someone living in Europe or North America. In 2011 alone, economic damages and losses from disasters in the region totaled more than $293 billion.

The impacts of economic crises are equally devastating. Five years of worldwide financial crises have shown how difficult it is for economically and socially vulnerable people to cope with unexpected shocks, imposed by forces well beyond their control.

While global financial crises, food and fuel crises, and the consequences of natural disasters may seem to be unrelated, they are all shocks applied to the complex systems that interlink social, economic and environmental factors. A single incident, which might once have been localized and managed in isolation, now has multiple and interrelated regional and global consequences. Floods in Thailand, for example, triggered supply-chain disruptions around the world, and severe droughts that covered large swathes of China and Central Asia led to higher food prices for millions of people.

For many policymakers, this is uncharted territory: they are more accustomed to focusing on problems in particular economic or social sectors rather than treating them as systemic wholes. This report provides a comprehensive response to addressing multiple shocks in Asia and the Pacific. It shows how people, organizations, institutions and policymakers can work together to weave resilience into economic, social and environmental policies.