US urges ASEAN armies to prepare for more natural disasters

Terra Daily via AFP: US officials on Wednesday offered to help ASEAN countries prepare for the devastating effects of climate change, urging stronger cooperation among armies and emergency agencies.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and other top officials discussed the danger posed by rising global temperatures with ASEAN defense ministers in Honolulu, home to a major US weather research center that tracks sea levels and tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean.

"The more we can understand the science behind these natural disasters the more we can coordinate and communicate our efforts to help each other," Hagel told his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Hagel said that cooperation among ASEAN militaries for humanitarian operations was steadily growing but that more collaboration was needed, as scientists predict more typhoons and other natural disasters will hit the region....

A scene during the 2011 flooding in Thailand, shot by DANIEL JULIE, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license