Climate change and disaster risks pose a growing threat and could undermine development efforts in Asia and the Pacific region. The number of disasters triggered by natural hazards occurring yearly continues to increase due to climate change and increased incidence of overlapping and compounding hazard events. From 2012 to 2022, disasters brought about by natural hazards caused more than US$734 billion worth of damage to lives, livelihoods, and other assets.^[1]

Recognizing that urgent action is required to support developing member countries in strengthening resilience through climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction, ADB has prioritized building climate and disaster resilience as one of its seven operational priorities under its Strategy 2030. Increasing investments to address climate change and disaster risks requires an enhanced capacity to make risk-informed decisions, ensure investments in different sectors are resilient to the potential impacts of climate change and disasters, and identify, prioritize, and finance new investments with the primary purpose of building resilience.

This quick course, composed of three short sessions on climate and disaster risk-informed investments, seeks to enhance the learner's understanding of applying climate and disaster risk information for decision-making related to public and private investments. Specifically, this aims to (i) establish the importance of climate and disaster risk-informed development, (ii) provide science and tools to enable risk-informed decision-making, (iii) share the use of risk information in decision-making for public investments, and (iv) provide ideas on how to use risk-information to steer private sector investments in resilience.

This learning experience draws from the Regional Workshop on Climate and Disaster Risk-Informed Investments, conducted on 22-23 June 2023 in Bangkok, Thailand. The regional workshop, supported by the Federal Ministry of Finance of Austria, was participated in by selected government officials from 10 ADB developing member countries.

[1] Bündnis Entwicklung Hilf. 2022. WorldRiskReport 2022 Focus: Digitalization. Bochum. WorldRiskReport_2021_Online.pdf (weltrisikobericht.de), and EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (accessed 19 April 2023).