Foreword

Building resilience to multiple shocks is one of the most pressing contemporary development challenges faced by Asia and the Pacific. Economic crises and natural disasters are on the rise and know no boundaries; they straddle wide geographic areas, spread across all sectors of economic activity, and endanger our communities. For communities still living in fragile and conflict-affected States, each shock erodes their capacity to cope with the next disaster or crisis on the horizon. They are twice as likely to be undernourished and their children three times as likely to be out of school, while they receive less than half the amount that Governments in other countries spend on education, health and security. These communities are stuck in life-long vulnerability traps from which it is very difficult to break out.

Related Subject(s): Economic and Social Development