The Asia Pacific Disaster Report 2015

The world's most disaster-prone region has witnessed natural disasters that affected development. Building resilience to natural disasters is crucial. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) must be integrated into national development planning. This report assesses the state of resilience in the region, and disaster-related goals and targets of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. It highlights drought and reviews information management that would equip many countries in providing the right information to the right people at the right time, paying attention to the need to integrate DRR into development planning and government. The goal is to build resilience towards achieving sustainable development.

The world's most disaster-prone region has witnessed natural disasters that affected development. Building resilience to natural disasters is crucial. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) must be integrated into national development planning. This report assesses the state of resilience in the region, and disaster-related goals and targets of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. It highlights drought and reviews information management that would equip many countries in providing the right information to the right people at the right time, paying attention to the need to integrate DRR into development planning and government. The goal is to build resilience towards achieving sustainable development.

This report examines the state of resilience of the region vis-à-vis the goals and targets relating to disaster risk reduction. It highlights some of the tools and approaches for resilience-building focusing on those that could possibly offer transformative shifts to achieve those goals and targets. Finally, it offers a reflection on the way forward for the region, including specific regional action that could be prioritized to support efforts by countries to achieve resilience to disasters and the whole 2030 Agenda.

This book uses two international frameworks—the Millennium Development Goals and the Hyogo Framework for Action, a program focused on disaster risk management—to study the key trends in the region in terms of disaster incidence, sources of vulnerability and social and economic challenges. As both frameworks draw to a close, international debate is taking place during the period 2012–2015 on their current progress. This book seeks to help readers understand the process better. The chapters are written by eight independent internationally based authors. Collectively, they have extensive regional experience in the areas of disaster risk management and climate change as well as working in academia, research, consultancy, the UN and international agencies, government and the NGO sector. The analysis presented benefits from their varied backgrounds in medicine, architecture, economics, engineering, planning, social studies, development studies and political science. Throughout the book, relevant examples, drawn from the region, are included to ‘earth’ the project in the harsh realities of risk and disaster impact.

The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable to a variety of natural and manmade hazards. This edited book productively brings together scholars and senior public officials having direct experience in dealing with or researching on recent major natural disasters in the Asia-Pacific. The chapters focus on disaster preparedness and management, including pre-event planning and mitigation, crisis leadership and emergency response, and disaster recovery. Specific events discussed in this book include a broad spectrum of disasters such as tropical storms and typhoons in the Philippines; earthquakes in China; tsunamis in Indonesia, Japan, and Maldives; and bushfires in Australia. The book aims to generate discussions about improved risk reduction strategies throughout the region. It seeks to provide a comparative perspective across countries to draw lessons from three perspectives: public policy, humanitarian systems, and community engagement.

Part I of this report assesses trends and developments in regional trade and investment flows and policies in an attempt to provide the insights and information necessary to separate the cyclical from the structural aspects. Part II analyses the participation of Asia-Pacific economies in global and regional value chains. By observing how economies at different levels of development have integrated into supply chains at different speeds and to varying extents, we can cast light on those policies that influence and shape value chain participation, and hence influence future patterns of trade and investment. The particular features of participation in value chains also have an impact on the ability of countries to access foreign technology and build innovative capacity, which in turn influences structural change and future development options.

The last twenty years has seen the number of major floods more than double, from 1,389 to 3,254, while the incidence of storms grew from 1,457 to 2,034. Floods and storms were the most prevalent events. The report “The Human Cost of Disasters 2000-2019” also records major increases in other categories including drought, wildfires and extreme temperature events. There has also been a rise in geo-physical events including earthquakes and tsunamis which have killed more people than any of the other natural hazards under review in this report.