| Neena Bhandari World Bank

Asia Pacific tops list of most impacted by weather perils

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 08.03.2024 (SciDev.Net): Climate change will be the main driver of future economic risks, with countries in the Asia Pacific region among the most vulnerable to extreme weather events, according to new analysis.

Four weather perils –– floods, tropical cyclones, winter storms and severe thunderstorms –– account for the largest share of economic losses from natural disasters globally, according to a report by the Swiss Re Institute, the research arm of global insurance firm Swiss Re. Of 36 countries studied, the Philippines is the most impacted by tropical cyclones, severe thunderstorms and floods, and these hazards are highly likely to intensify here, the report says. This causes the Philippines annual economic losses (based on property damage) of 3 per cent of GDP –– eight times more than any other country.

The analysts argue that private sector finance must be mobilised to mitigate these risks and adapt to climate change.

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Micro-estimates of wealth data ‘can help tackle poverty’

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 25.01.2022 (SciDev.Net): A data project charting poverty levels in detail across the global South could help policymakers better target social assistance and humanitarian aid, researchers say.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened poverty globally, with an estimated 97 million more people, most of them in LMICs, pushed into extreme poverty in 2021, according to the World Bank. But a dearth of reliable and up-to-date poverty data in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) poses a major challenge for governments and civil society.

To bridge this data gap, researchers at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and the Data for Good programme, which collates data from Meta platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, have developed a public data set of Relative Wealth Index (RWI), which provides micro-estimates of wealth of all populated areas in the 135 LMICs. The study was published in PNAS on 18 January.

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