Climate-related disasters in Asia and the Pacific
ADB economics working paper series no 358:
This paper questions the relationship between the changes in climate and the increase in natural disasters in Asia and the Pacific. It considers three main disaster risk factors behind the increased frequency of intense natural disasters: rising population exposure, greater population vulnerability, and increasing climate-related hazards.
The paper is structured as follows: (i) it commences with the observed changes in climatic variables in Asia and the Pacific, and then explores whether there is a statistical relationship between these changes in climate variables and the frequency of intense natural disasters; (ii) it sets out a framework for analysis, based on the IPCC’s disaster risk framework, focusing on the key idea that natural disaster risk is affected by hazards, exposure to those hazards, and vulnerability to their effects; (iii) it presents an overview of natural disaster data and trends globally, and in Asia and the Pacific; (iv) it uses the disaster risk framework presented in section II to examine how the risks of intense climate-related disasters in Asia and the Pacific might be connected to demographic factors, socioeconomic and environmental degradation, and climate anomalies; (v) complements the regional review with a description of the likely impact of climate and disasters in the Philippines; and (vi) the final section presents some implications.