Session 1 : Understanding the Changing Risk Landscape
Key Takeaways
SEA is a hotspot for diseases, disasters and climate-sensitive impact.
The pace and scale of climate change is mainly anthropogenic.
Disaster, disease and health risks are increasingly interconnected and compound
Cross-sectoral action is necessary to address this challenge which is affecting the whole of society.
Preparedness needs to become more proactive, collaborative and integrated.
While extreme, acute risks (e.g., Typhoons) often make headlines, we must not forget to address the impacts of slow onset risks communities across a diversity of factors like health and livelihoods.
Impacts
Extreme climate events cause immediate severe impacts: Abrupt disasters such as typhoons, avalanches, heatwaves, and glacier collapses command media coverage and trigger instant, widespread disruption.
Slow-onset climate events create long-term vulnerabilities: Insidious changes like sea level rise, ocean acidification, and glacial melting quietly undermine communities, ecosystems, and health over time.
Multi-Hazard Threat & Systemic Risks: Southeast Asia faces widespread hydrometeorological hazards, rising sea levels, and urban vulnerabilities, impacting shelter, infrastructure, agriculture, and water access.
Health & Disease Vulnerabilities: Climate change exacerbates vector-borne and infectious diseases, chronic kidney conditions, heat stress in maternal health, and mental health trauma across affected regions.
Extreme & Indoor Heat Risks: Rapid urbanization and high density worsen heat exposure, where unmitigated indoor temperatures and consecutive hot nights severely increase mortality and health risks for vulnerable, low-income communities.
Equity, Adaptation & Policy Needs: Addressing widening health disparities requires whole-of-society collaboration, climate-smart health systems, targeted heat advisories, and mandatory rest protections for outdoor workers.
At the end of the series, participants will be able to:
Understand how climate change is reshaping the interconnected landscape of disasters, diseases, and humanitarian risks, and recognise the implications for communities across Southeast Asia.
Recognise the direct and indirect pathways through which climate change influences disaster risks, disease transmission, and community vulnerability, including how disasters can create conditions for secondary public health impacts.
Identify practical approaches that National Societies can adopt to strengthen climate-smart, integrated preparedness across disaster management and public health, including anticipatory action, disease surveillance, risk communication, WASH, and community engagement.
Contextualise climate and public health knowledge into locally relevant preparedness actions that support Red Cross Red Crescent volunteers and communities in building resilience to evolving and interconnected risks.
Page updated
Report abuse