ABSTRACT

Climate hazards are the world’s most widespread, deadliest and costliest natural disasters. Knowledge of climate hazard dynamics is critical since the impacts of climate change, population growth, development projects and migration affect both the impact and severity of disasters. Current global events highlight how hazards can lead to significant financial losses, increased mortality rates and political instability.

This book examines climate hazard crises in contemporary Asia, identifying how hazards from the Middle East through South and Central Asia and China have the power to reshape our globalised world. In an era of changing climates, knowledge of hazard dynamics is essential to mitigating disasters and strengthening livelihoods and societies across Asia. By integrating human exposure to climate factors and disaster episodes, the book explores the environmental forces that drive disasters and their social implications. Focusing on a range of Asian countries, landscapes and themes, the chapters address several scales (province, national, regional), different hazards (drought, flood, temperature, storms, dust), environments (desert, temperate, mountain, coastal) and issues (vulnerability, development, management, politics) to present a diverse, comprehensive evaluation of climate hazards in Asia. This book offers an understanding of the challenges climate hazards present, their critical nature and the effort needed to mitigate climate hazards in 21st-century Asia.

Climate Hazard Crises in Asian Societies and Environments is vital reading for those interested and engaged in Asia’s development and well-being today and will be of interest to those working in Geography, Development Studies, Environmental Sciences, Sociology and Political Science.

chapter 1|10 pages

An unstable, stable nation? Climate, water, migration and security in Syria from 2006–2011

ByFrancesco Femia, Caitlin Werrell

chapter 2|23 pages

Post-disaster reconstruction strategies

A case study in Taiwan
ByYung-Fang Chen

chapter 3|22 pages

Human amplification of climate hazards

2010 floods in Pakistan
ByInam-ur-Rahim, Henri Rueff

chapter 4|17 pages

Climate hazards and health in Asia

ByIlan Kelman, Tim Colbourn

chapter 5|30 pages

Evolving a multi-hazard focused approach for arid Eurasia

ByMasato Shinoda

chapter 6|17 pages

Climate change and security

Major challenges for Yemen’s future 1
ByHelen Lackner

chapter 7|20 pages

Climatic hazards in the Himalayan region

ByPrajjwal Panday

chapter 8|15 pages

China’s natural and constructed hazard regimes

ByTroy Sternberg

chapter 9|22 pages

Temporal and spatial distributions of dust storms in Middle Asia

Natural and anthropogenic factors
ByLeah Orlovsky, Rodica Indoitu, Giorgi Kozhoridze, Madina Batyrbaeva, Irina Vitkovskaya, Batyr Mamedov, Nikolai Orlovsky

chapter 10|16 pages

Climate hazards in Asian drylands

ByTroy Sternberg

chapter 11|21 pages

Climate change

Rethinking the local for policy and practice
ByLena Dominelli