Posts tagged disasters

Post-pandemic Asia Pacific lags on climate SDG – UN

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Impacts of COVID-19, climate change and human-made crises have further disadvantaged vulnerable groups, including rural populations, poorer households, women and people with severe disabilities, says a UN report. Tai O fishing village on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. Photo Credit: © Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 25.03.2022 (SciDev.Net): The Asia Pacific region has significantly regressed on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets related to climate action and responsible consumption and production, moving the region further away from the 2030 goalpost, according to a UN report.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific’s (ESCAP) 2022 Asia-Pacific SDG Progress Report, launched on 17 March, notes that inequality in the region has widened due to impacts of COVID-19, climate change and human-made crises. It says vulnerable groups, including women, rural populations, poorer households and people with severe disabilities, have been disadvantaged the most as a result.

“The sole focus on economic recovery post-pandemic is likely to hinder progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals, which was already lagging to begin with,” Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, UN Under-Secretary-General and ESCAP’s executive secretary, tells SciDev.Net. “As the region strives to build back better and recover, the 2030 Agenda can serve as a guiding mechanism for both economic and social development”.

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Global disasters linked to warming Indo-Pacific seas

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By Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY, 29.11.19 (SciDev.Net): East Asian floods, African droughts and the frequent California fires may be linked to the rapid warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean that impacts global rainfall patterns and corresponding weather, says a new study published on 27 November in Nature.

Each year, weather variability at sub-seasonal to seasonal timescales costs the global economy over US$2 trillion with costs to the US alone amounting to US$700 billion.

“The Indo-Pacific warm pool, a region between the eastern Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean, with ocean temperatures generally warmer than 28 degrees Celsius, has been warming since the 1900s, but during 1981—2018, it expanded at a rate of about 400,000 square kilometres per year — the size of Thailand or Spain,” says Roxy Mathew Koll, lead author and climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.

Continue reading on SciDev.Net Asia & Pacific Edition.

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