Climate Disasters and Development in Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This paper is written in the context of development in Asia and the Pacific,1 where natural disasters play a visible role in hindering and slowing socioeconomic progress (Maplecroft 2012, Independent Evaluation Group [IEG] 2006, World Bank 2011). Disaster management involves a number of socioeconomic and climatic factors. Within this broad context, the paper examines the apparent contribution of climate factors to disaster trends. 4. This paper does not reexamine the causal chain from greenhouse emissions to atmospheric concentrations, to changes in climate variables such as temperature and precipitation. There is a great deal of research on the science of climate change (Hansen and Sato 2012; Huber and Knutti 2012; Knutson et al. 2010; and Trenberth 2011), and we do not seek to replicate or extend it. Rather, the paper commences with the observed changes in climatic variables in Asia and the Pacific, and then explores whether there is a statistical relationship between these changes in climate variables and the frequency of intense natural disasters.