Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2025: Rising heat, rising risk

This report assesses recent as well as long-term trends. Based on the latest projections, it distills cascading impacts for multiple infrastructures, and interrelated food, water and energy systems. It identifies troubling impacts on health systems, labour productivity, livelihoods and human well-being, with vulnerable people among those disproportionately impacted by these projections. Furthermore, the report identifies important opportunities for solutions and policy actions. In this regard, countries will have to plan strategically for heat resilience at both local and national levels, while also taking full advantage of opportunities for regional cooperation.

The report underlines that as climate change, rising temperatures and risk is a global phenomenon, policy coordination at the regional level will be key to advancing multilateral cooperation for human resilience to disasters. Towards this end, the report finds that dedicated funding may not be needed. Instead financing for heat resilience requires strategic integration into existing adaptation plans, development funding and policy streams, and guided by advances in science, technology, innovation and data-sharing at national, regional and global levels. The Asia-Pacific region has had considerable experience with managing cascading disasters, but the rising threat of extreme heat demands a new level of urgency. Every country needs to act now, with implementation of regional cooperation initiatives turbocharged to meet the scale of this evolving disaster risk landscape. The proposed recommendations are a direct regional response to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Call to Action on Extreme Heat. The priority is to move from a reactive to a strategic approach to heat risk management.