Asia-Pacific: Still Has Insufficient Resilience Against Disasters

The Pacific Ring of Fire

Thirteen years after the Great Asian Tsunami that killed 200,000 people and 4 years after the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm in recorded history, the Asia-Pacific region still has not caught up to the demands for resilience in relation to disasters.

According to the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the regions is one of the most disaster-prone in the world and efforts in disaster resilience has been outpaced by disaster risks worsened by Climate Change.

This can result in an increasing number of people being pushed back into poverty since they are unable to cope with the effects of disasters. These populations have the lest capacity to prepare and respond to disasters according to the ESCAP report.

“Disasters can very quickly strip poor people of their livelihoods, bringing deeply disruptive impacts that push them back into absolute poverty or trap them in an intergenerational transmission of poverty,” Shamshad Akhtar, executive secretary of the ESCAP,  said.

The Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2017 cited that from the year 2000 to 2015, almost 15 times disaster-related deaths were recorded in middle to lower income countries as compared to Asia-Pacific’s higher income countries.

The Asia and the Pacific regions account for 36% of the global gross domestic product. It is predicted that in the next 15 years, global economic losses in the Asia and Pacific regions will form 40% of these losses. 

The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world with disaster risks running from earthquakes to typhoons, flooding, and other natural disasters. Geographically, the Philippines is in the “Typhon Belt” and located in the “Pacific Ring of Fire” where volcanic and tectonic plate movements are most active.