The report by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, or ESCAP, says nearly $145 billion is needed to set up systems to minimize deaths and damage from floods, earthquakes, drought and other disasters.
The U.N. has set a goal of having every person on Earth covered by early warning systems by 2027, yet half of all countries lack such systems and even fewer have ones that are linked to emergency planning, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, head of the International Telecommunications Union, said in a video message on Twitter.
And without such precautions, regional annual losses from disasters are projected to amount to about $1 trillion annually, or 3.1% of regional GDP. Aside from warning systems, the report urges countries to do more to mitigate impacts of climate change, such as planting mangroves to control coastal erosion and flooding, restoring natural flood plains and wetlands and diversifying crops to help farmers adjust to changing conditions.