As the world’s most natural disaster-prone region and with climate change adding to its vulnerability, Asia and the Pacific must make disaster risk reduction and climate preparedness a key component of its economic and social development agenda, said United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Dr. Noeleen Heyzer.
“The fight against extreme poverty cannot be won without also addressing the climate vulnerabilities of our most at-risk communities,” Dr. Heyzer said in her opening remarks at the Asia-Pacific launch of the United Nations climate change panel’s Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Climate Change Adaptation (SREX).
...Noting that Asia-Pacific countries accounted for 70 per cent of global losses from natural disasters in 2011, estimated at more than $366 billion, Dr. Heyzer said the poor and marginalized suffer the most from disasters related to climate change such as floods and droughts.
Hazards linked to increasingly variable climate conditions, “become disasters in the absence of development, where inequalities are greatest and with inadequate investment in risk reduction.”...
A weekend market in Bangkok, shot by edwin11_79, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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