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Southeast Asia is battling unusually severe flooding this year, as late-season storms and persistent rains wreak havoc, putting many places at risk.
Deaths have risen above 1,200 Indonesia, Sri LankaAnd ThailandMore than 800 people are still missing in floods and landslides. In Indonesia, entire villages have been cut off after bridges and roads were washed away. Thousands of people in Sri Lanka lack clean water, while Thailand’s Prime Minister acknowledged shortcomings in his government’s response.
malaysia The state is still grappling with its worst-ever floods, which killed three people and displaced thousands. Meanwhile, Vietnam and the Philippines have faced a year of severe typhoons and floods that have killed hundreds of people.
What sounds unprecedented is exactly what climate scientists expect: a new normal of storms, floods and devastation.
“Southeast Asia should prepare for a possible continuation and possible decline in extreme weather for many years in 2026 and immediately thereafter,” said Jamila Mahmood, head of the Sunway Center for Planetary Health, a think tank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Asia is facing the climate crisis with full force
Climate patterns last year helped set the stage for extreme weather in 2025.
Atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide could jump by the most on record in 2024. The UN’s World Meteorological Organization says it “turbocharged” the climate, resulting in more extreme weather.
Asia is bearing the brunt of such changes, with temperatures rising almost twice as fast as the global average. Scientists agree that the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events is increasing.
Benjamin Horton, professor of earth sciences at the City University of Hong Kong, said warmer ocean temperatures provide more energy for storms, making them stronger and wetter, while sea level rise increases the intensity of storms.
Hurricanes are becoming more frequent at the end of the year as climate change affects air and ocean currents, including systems like El Niño, which keep ocean waters warmer for longer periods of time and extend hurricane season. With more moisture in the air and changes in wind patterns, storms can form faster.
“Although the total number of hurricanes may not increase dramatically, their severity and unpredictability will increase,” Horton said.
Governments were not ready
The unpredictability, intensity and frequency of recent extreme weather events is weighing heavily on Southeast Asian governments, said Aslam Pervez of the Bangkok-based Intergovernmental Asian Disaster Preparedness Center. He attributes this to a tendency to focus on responding to disasters rather than preparing for them.
Pervez warned, “Future disasters will leave us even less time to prepare.”
In Sri Lanka’s worst-hit provinces, little has changed since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, said Sarala Emmanuel, a human rights researcher in Batticaloa. 230,000 people died in this.
“When a disaster like this strikes, poor and marginalized communities are hardest hit,” Emmanuel said. This also includes poor tea garden workers living in landslide-prone areas.
Sandun Thudugala of the Colombo-based non-profit Law and Society Trust said the flood damage was compounded by unregulated development that harmed the local ecosystem. Sri Lanka needs to rethink how it builds and plans, he said, keeping in mind a future where extreme weather is the norm.
Video of logs washed downstream in Indonesia shows that deforestation may have made floods worse. According to Global Forest Watch, since 2000, floods in the Indonesian provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra have destroyed 19,600 square kilometers (7,569 square miles) of forest, an area larger than the state of New Jersey.
Officials rejected claims of illegal logging and said the wood appeared to be old and probably came from landholders.
Billions lost while climate finance remains limited
Countries are losing billions of dollars every year due to climate change.
Vietnam estimates it has suffered losses of more than $3 billion due to floods, landslides and typhoons in the first 11 months of this year.
Thailand’s government data is fragmentary, but its agriculture ministry estimates agricultural losses of about $47 million since August. The Kasikorn Research Center estimates that the November floods in southern Thailand alone caused about $781 million in damages, potentially reducing 0.1% of GDP.
Indonesia does not have data on losses for this year, but its finance ministry says its annual average loss from natural disasters is $1.37 billion.
The costs from disasters are an additional burden for Sri Lanka, which makes a small contribution to global carbon emissions but is at the forefront of climate impacts even as it spends most of its wealth repaying foreign debts, Thudugala said.
“There is an urgent need for vulnerable countries like ours to compensate for the losses and damages caused by global warming,” Thudugala said.
“My request… is for support to offset some of the losses we have suffered,” said Rohan Wickramarachchi, owner of a commercial building in the central Sri Lankan city of Peradeniya. She and dozens of other families she knew must now start over.
Responding to increasingly desperate calls for help, at the COP30 global climate conference in Brazil last month, countries pledged to triple funding for climate adaptation and provide $1.3 trillion in annual climate financing by 2035. This is still far less than developing countries requested, and it is unclear whether those funds will actually materialize.
Thomas Holley of Climate Analytics, a science and policy institute, said Southeast Asia is at a crossroads for climate action. The region is increasing its use of renewable energy but is still dependent on fossil fuels.
“What we are seeing in this region is dramatic and unfortunately a stark reminder of the consequences of the climate crisis,” Holley said.
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Reported Reported Reported Bangkok. Associated Press writers Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok, Thailand, Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India, Eranga Jayewardene in Kandy, Sri Lanka and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia contributed to this report.
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