News and announcements

The central north Amazon, with extensive areas of high forest cover, natural savannas and vast and important indigenous territories, was not previously considered as being the most affected by climate change.

Communities choosing to stay on their ancestral lands rather than engaging in climate-related planned relocation offer an important perspective—one that recentres cultural security as fundamental to climate security.

As what could be the strongest El Niño on record develops, families, communities and economies need to prepare for the worst. Local areas may see more intense effects than expected, or they may see different effects than in past El Niños.

Flash floods can occur within minutes after extreme rainfall, landslides or infrastructure failures. Climate change is increasing heavy rainfall, while ageing infrastructure and urban development can worsen flood impacts and raise risk.

WFP is scaling up anticipatory action across Africa, Asia and Latin America to help vulnerable communities prepare for El Niño-linked droughts, floods and hunger through cash assistance, early warnings, farming support and resilience measures.

This report compiles global best practices on industrial hazard mitigation and management, drawing lessons from major incidents, safety frameworks and international experience to strengthen risk-informed governance, preparedness, resilience and safety.

What happens when water, ice and more thunder down into a valley?

They explore the idea of appliances as “microinfrastructure”—from fans and air conditioners that reduce heat risk to refrigeration, cold storage, and solar water pumps that support food security and livelihoods.

A decade after Cape Town came within days of running dry, a senior city policy official reflects on how the 'day zero' drought reshaped the way the city collects, shares, and acts on data.

In an exclusive Climate Tracker Asia interview, UNDRR chief Kamal Kishore discusses early action, disaster financing and cascading risks across Asia-Pacific.

As wildfires strain resources across North America, IAFF training is preparing municipal fire fighters to respond safely in the wildland-urban interface.

Study assessing the exposure of Brazil’s Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS) to flood and landslide risks. By integrating IDCRAS and BATER data, it identifies vulnerable facilities and supports preparedness, contingency planning and DRR.

Vermont recognized the ongoing flood exposure facing the state with the passing of July 10, a now-infamous date for Vermont.

Smoke from fires in Indonesia's Borneo and Sumatra regions has affected millions, disrupted education and worsened air quality across Southeast Asia. Dry El Niño conditions and land-clearing fires have intensified emissions, haze and health impacts.

This paper examines institutional heat risk communication in England. Interviews with 29 practitioners revealed strong alert and coordination systems, but uneven public engagement, limited evaluation and capacity constraints that hinder effectiveness.

This paper presents the Community Capacity Co-design Process (C3P), a trauma-informed, seven-step framework that enables communities to localise and evaluate their own disaster response capacities.

This study examines how flooding and fire are experienced and managed in Khan Road informal settlement, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa.

This study introduces a structured framework for compiling a multi-hazard inventory of transport disruptions using open access news media.

This study develops a standardised, reproducible, and operational methodology to screen tsunami risk at the community scale across the Caribbean Basin, based exclusively on open and globally consistent datasets

More than half of reporting companies provide no core quantitative metrics, raising concerns over their ability to measure nature-related risks and potential greenwashing.

This study presents a detailed and refined glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) risk assessment using a data-driven machine learning framework.

This Climate and Health Vulnerability Assessment (CHVA) sets out to understand how climate change is affecting health outcomes and Tunisia’s health system, and what opportunities exist for health system adaptation.

This Ready2Respond (R2R) diagnostic assesses Liberia’s emergency preparedness and response (EP&R) capacity across five components

Extreme heat has become more common—as both research and lived experience show—but when it arrives is a different question.

Sustained high temperatures may crimp yields while high humidity could raise risks of crop diseases

A study suggests that isotopes can provide an early warning of prolonged droughts. This study is one of the first in over 30 years to utilize isotopic techniques in Amazonian hydroclimatic research.

Dozens of glacial lakes have formed across northern India in the last three decades, while existing lakes have expanded rapidly, highlighting the need to monitor a landscape reshaped by climate change.

The devastating flash floods that swept through Nepal’s Bhote Koshi–Trishuli river corridor on 26 August 2026 have taken a heavy toll on communities, killing over 1000 people, forcing many to flee their homes.

Deventer is closing its harbour to ships from this weekend after the summer drought caused the water level in the river IJssel to drop to exceptionally low levels.

Rising sea levels and storm surges could cost $855 billion in economic losses across Australia by the end of the century, according to new Australian-first research.

Estimates suggest drop in production with vineyards also concerned ‘smoke taint’ from wildfires may affect quality.

The agreement will allow Seychelles to rapidly access funds for household cash transfers following climate shocks such as floods, landslides and tsunamis, with the ASP acting as the delivery channel for these transfers to affected individuals and families

The report concludes that the 26 August 2026 Bhotekoshi flash flood appears to have been triggered by an ice, rock and soil mass failure around the Deding/Langtang region rather than intense localized rainfall.

This paper develops a mechanism-based framework for understanding communication-related vulnerability in flood-prone communities. Survey results from Pakistan highlight trust, literacy, access and information barriers that limit effective warning response

This study introduces the ICLEWS framework and assesses local early warning systems in 2,289 Brazilian municipalities. Results highlight gaps in staffing, financing, social participation and governance, underscoring the need for stronger local capacities.

The disaster exposed a weakness on both sides of Nepal’s warning system: It had no real-time information about the hazard developing in Tibet, while the monitoring equipment it had installed inside Nepal was destroyed before it could send an alert.

Volcanologist Philipp Ruprecht explains the connections between two geophysical hazards

In response to the devastating disasters that have struck communities across the globe in 2026 and the first quarter of the 21st century, IRDR has issued a new statement, "Advancing Science for Disaster Risk Reduction Towards 2030 and Beyond".

Study of climate resilience governance in UK urban areas. Through a scoping review and policy analysis, it finds fragmented responsibilities, inequitable vulnerability and a lack of common resilience standards, proposing a place-based resilience benchmark

This paper introduces the FLOSEV flood severity scale, an impact-based classification system using fatalities, affected municipalities and damage indicators. Tested on more than a century of Italian floods, it enables comparison of flood impacts.

This snapshot examines climate-related school disruptions in 2025, finding that at least 171 million students from pre-primary to upper secondary education experienced disruption across 106 countries and territories.

Study from Kerala shows how climate hazards can deepen inequalities for people with disabilities through inaccessible warnings, evacuation routes, shelters and services. Similar challenges in Sierra Leone highlight the need for inclusive climate action.

After seven years of drought, Morocco experienced an exceptionally wet winter in 2025–26 as Atlantic storm tracks shifted southward. The article argues that future rainfall will depend more on North Atlantic conditions than on El Niño alone.

This case study of Vietnam’s heat early warning system finds that heat monitoring and forecasting are established, but risk knowledge, preparedness, targeting of warnings and institutional coordination remain limited.

Review of disaster management research in Bangladesh (2000–2024). The paper identifies major thematic trends, gaps and challenges, highlighting a shift toward resilience-based approaches while calling for stronger governance, inclusion and coordination.

Forecasting and early warning technology remain essential, but they have to be matched by readiness at the community level – evacuation plans, trusted communication networks, prepared local institutions and people able to act when information arrives.

Exceptionally high temperatures preceded the August mountain collapse that triggered deadly floods in Nepal and China. Scientists say heat may have contributed to permafrost thaw and glacier instability, but no direct causal link has yet been established.

Ethical preparedness requires communities to recognise vulnerability beforehand. Ethical leadership must move beyond the actions of individual leaders and become embedded within the culture and practices of organisations and communities.