ISLAMABAD: According to a United Nations report released on Wednesday, the year 2022 served as yet another reminder that Asia-Pacific is the region in the world that is most susceptible to disasters. The floods were the deadliest, accounting for 74.4 percent of disaster events in the region and 88.4 percent of all deaths worldwide.
According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), the year 2022 also saw cascading disasters, in which a series of hazard events preceded the initial and residual effects.
Pakistan experienced melting glaciers as a result of the record-breaking spring heat. This, in addition to unprecedented monsoon rain, led to historic flooding that ravaged a significant portion of the country.
The publication “2022: According to the report, “it was a unique example of cascading disasters where a heat wave triggered the melting of glaciers and the event converged with a large-scale monsoon resulting in prolonged flooding and attendant water-borne diseases” in “A year when disasters compounded and cascaded.”
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According to the report, Pakistan faced a cascading crisis as a result of rising food and fuel costs as well as significant economic difficulties that remained even prior to the recent floods.
According to the UN-ESCAP, the major disasters of 2022 occurred across the development spectrum, including floods in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Thailand; droughts in China, Kiribati, and Tuvalu; typhoons Megi and Nalgae in the Philippines; heatwaves in India, Pakistan, and Japan; and earthquakes in Afghanistan, Fiji, and Indonesia.
The tropical Pacific has been in a la nina state all year, and the first “triple-dip” La Nia event of the 21st century occurred from August to October 2022. A series of extreme weather events occurred worldwide as a result of this and a warmer planet.
One notable instance was the flood in Pakistan in 2022, which killed 1,739 people and affected 33 million people.
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India and Pakistan experienced their warmest March and April ever in 2022. During the La Nia phenomenon, which occurs in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, the pre-monsoon period in South Asia typically includes excessively high temperatures, particularly in May. However, scientists believe that the early heat waves were caused by persistent north-south low-pressure patterns that formed over India during the winter.
The major disasters in 2022 were complex with compounding and cascading effects, driven by the characteristics of the hazards and the underlying diverse socioeconomic vulnerabilities and exposures.
For instance, the 2022 earthquakes in Indonesia and Afghanistan had magnitudes of 5.9 and 5.6, respectively, but their effects were relatively moderate.
The primary reason was that the community was at risk of severe vulnerability and that its economic and social assets were directly exposed near the epicenters of the earthquakes.
Read: The Plight of Afghans