Description: Extreme weather conditions have flooded large swathes of territory across countries in Southeastern Asia claiming the lives of more than 1 thousand people with thousands of people still missing. In Indonesia, floods have caused massive disruptions in public services, destroyed homes and public infrastructure and strained the disaster prevention mechanisms. The provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra and West Sumatra were heavily affected by the floods as Indonesia’s Home Affairs Minister stated that the military would be dispatched to support the emergency services in assisting the evacuation and repairing the damage. Sri Lanka has declared a state of emergency with the Colombo region being mostly affected by the storms and the flooding and also deployed the military to assist in the evacuation of civilians. In Thailand the natural disaster mostly affected the southern parts of the country in the Songkhla province where more than 131 people have died. Malaysia was also struck by the deadly storms with the state of Perlis being the most affected one.
Impact: The natural disasters across the Asian continent in recent months emphasize the importance of addressing climate change issues as a priority in countries that are regularly affected by deadly storms, earthquakes and other forms of extreme weather conditions. The consequences of the floods accentuate the need for countries to invest in emergency and disaster prevention services as well as in the betterment of the infrastructural capabilities in order to sustain and limit the damage from the natural disaster of this kind. Most countries across southern Asia have suffered devastating consequences from the extreme weather conditions which have resulted in massive loss of human life which also indicates the need to improve coordination mechanisms on a regional level in order to devise mechanisms for early prevention from natural disasters. Central to the situation are the climate change issues which have to be tackled through energy resource diversification and environmental protection, in order to increase the potential for avoiding extreme weather conditions which eventually lead to natural disasters.