Asian countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines should invest more in governments' capacity to protect their citizens from climate change, reports UNB.
A year after super-typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines, a new report issued on Thursday by the international humanitarian and development agency Oxfam titled 'Can't Afford to Wait: Briefing Note', reveals that Asian governments are not prioritising disaster risk reduction initiatives, despite projections that the region will suffer more from climate change in the future.
Asia is the most disaster-prone region of the world, according to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). In 2013, some 78 per cent of people killed by disasters lived in Asia even though only 60 per cent of global disasters occurred here.
Over the past 20 years, Asia has borne almost half the estimated global economic cost of all disasters, amounting to almost US$53 billion annually. Direct losses from disasters in the region significantly outpaced growth in gross domestic product (GDP).
Harvest losses alone related to flooding in Southeast Asia have an estimated annual value of $1.0 billion.
If no action is taken, four countries -- Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam -- could suffer a loss equivalent to 6.7 per cent of GDP annually by the year 2100, more than double the global average loss, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
According to Climate Change Vulnerability Index 2015, Bangladesh is at most risk in terms of climate change vulnerability. Bangladesh faces total losses of about 3-4 per cent of GDP due to climate change.
Projections see negative trends as crop production is potentially set to decline for at least one crop in each region of the country.
Overall, agricultural GDP in Bangladesh is projected to be 3.1 per cent lower each year as a result of climate change, affecting 65 per cent of the country's labour force and hampering agriculture production which contributes 20 per cent to GDP.
Climate change in Bangladesh is an extremely crucial issue and according to National Geographic, Bangladesh ranks first as the nation most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change in the coming decades.
