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The Asia and the Pacific region is vulnerable to many natural disaster and expected impacts from climate change. In 2006, 74% of people killed by natural disasters were in Asia, with Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam among the countries most badly affected. Natural disasters such as windstorms, floods, droughts, earthquakes in combination with human-induced conditions such as deforestation, pollution, soil erosion collectively contribute to serious challenges for communities and governments. Climate change impacts are imminent and inevitable. The consensus among natural and social scientists, economists, and policymakers is that climate change is the most important challenge that this planet faces. It is pervasive, touching on every facet of the environment and human life including the environment, economy, transportation, communication, food production, and health. The temporal and geographic scale is wide. The projected economic, health, and societal costs put forth by experts are extraordinary. For example, the total economic cost of climate change threats could be an annual loss of 6-7% of Southeast Asian countries’ GDP by the end of the century, and the Pacific sub-region will see a sea-level rise of 0.19-0.58 meter by 2100 severely changing the lives of more than 50% of the people that live within 1.5 km of the shoreline leading to relocation, water and power shortages, and submerged infrastructure. Climate change impacts in Asia and the Pacific is particularly serious because of the fact that: 1) over 60% of the global population reside in Asia and the Pacific; 2) it has the most extensive coastline of any geographic region; and, 3) many of the world’s largest cities are located along Asian coasts. The impact of climate change in sea level rise would impact small island states such as the Maldives and Kiribati, and many of Asia’s largest coastal cities, such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila, Shanghai, and Ho Chi Minh City. Tens of millions of people in Asia may have to be resettled. Further, the expected greater intensity of cyclones and typhoons could have a larger impact than before on Bangladesh, China, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines, whose coastal areas already encounter among the world’s worst weather-related disasters year after year. Parts of many countries in Asia, including Northwestern India, Western China, and almost all of Pakistan, are already suffering from shortages of water, as well as land degradation and desertification, which will be further exacerbated by climate change. The World Conference on Disaster Reduction held in January 2005 in Kobe, Japan, adopted the Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters (referred as the “Hyogo Framework for Action” – HFA). The framework emphasizes the need to understand the linkages between disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, and that stakeholders work toward reducing disaster vulnerabilities of communities by helping them build their capacity to deal with disasters.