Regional Cooperation to Amplify Early Warning for All (EW4All) Investments

The Asia Pacific Region is home to 4.7 billion people, accounting for three-fifths of the world’s population, and is the most disaster-impacted region in the world. Between 1970 and 2024, natural hazards in Asia and the Pacific affected 6.97 billion people and killed more than 2 million, that is 38,622 lives per year, one life every 13 minutes.

Disasters are turning complex, compounding, and cascading with cross-border origins and impacts. Since natural hazards do not respect national boundaries, regional cooperation plays an indispensable role in enhancing shared learning to reduce disaster risk information discrepancies and accelerating people-centered early warning systems (EWS) throughout the Asia-Pacific region. As a result, leaders across Asia and the Pacific continue to recognize the criticality of coordinated and long-term preparedness and prevention efforts to mitigate shared disaster risks, especially through shared early warning system development.

Despite progress, gaps persist in EWS coverage across the Asia-Pacific, particularly in countries with limited or moderate multi-hazard early warning system (MHEWS) coverage, which experience significantly higher mortality rates during disasters compared to those with comprehensive systems. Recognizing this urgency, the United Nations Executive Action Plan for Early Warnings for All, introduced at COP27, underscores the imperative to address these disparities and advance MHEWS globally.

Echoing the UN Secretary-General’s Early Warnings for All initiative, the Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) intensified the regional commitment to accelerating climate action for sustainable development resolving to develop regional early warning systems (E/ESCAP/RES/79/1), and recommending the ESCAP Trust Fund for Tsunami, Disaster, and Climate Preparedness as a fit-for-purpose regional funding mechanism to support the early warning initiative through strategic regional cooperation approaches.

The ESCAP Trust Fund for Tsunami, Disaster, and Climate Preparedness was established in 2005, sparked by the regional commitment to address early warning system gaps, as were made evident following the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. 12 donors, led by a groundbreaking grant of US$10 million from the Government of Thailand, have pooled resources to realize a collective commitment to bolster early warning systems over the last 2 decades. Through regional cooperative approaches, the Trust Fund facilitates South-South cooperation to strengthen disaster resilience in high-risk, low-capacity countries and to ultimately reduce disaster fatalities and economic losses.

In commemoration of 20 years since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, a study was commissioned to offer insights into the socio-economic benefit of 20 years of Trust Fund investments and quantifying the amplifying factor of cooperation in disaster preparedness efforts.

This session, titled "Regional Cooperation to Amplify Early Warning for All (EW4ALL) Investments", will explore the amplifying effect of regional cooperation in enhancing the impacts of early warning initiatives in Asia and the Pacific.

Findings from the Trust Fund for Tsunami, Disaster and Climate Preparedness investments cost-benefit analysis will be presented, and multilateral and cooperative programming will be explored as a reliable approach to amplify the impacts of early warning investments and for the advancement of coherent transboundary early warning solutions and policies for leaving no one behind.