South Asia Disaster Report 2010 was officially launched at the Asian Ministerial Meeting in October 2010 in Korea.

South Asian region has seen impressive growth rates in recent years, but failed to distribute the fruits of growth equitably. The region is home to paradoxes and sharp contradictions: its cities offer luxury to some at the cost of exclusion of others and degradation of their environment. Socio-economically, the region is characterised by high levels of poverty, with nearly half of the worlds poor and half of the worlds illiterates and malnourished live in this region.

South Asia is also characterised with an 'ideal combination' of a multitude of hazards, high levels of risk, vulnerability and exposure; making disasters a regular bedfellow for a large number of people. Geographically, South Asia is exposed to a variety of hazards ranging from avalanches and glacial lake outbursts to floods originating from the Himalayas in the North, droughts and floods in the plains and cyclones in the South Eastern coast coming from the Bay of Bengal. The contributory conditions to turning hazards into disasters are on the increase, with the added dimensions of climate change.

The contemporary development models pursued in the regions have not been able to reverse the existing vulnerabilities but instead fuelled those further. SADR 2008 argued on how the development models followed in the South Asia region over the last decades have led to conditions of 'mal development' resulting in environmental degradation, creating new risks and hazards, increased poverty and marginalisation, trapping the poor tightly in a vicious spiral. The recent global assessments (GAR'09 and VFL '09) further strengthen this showing least progress of the priority for action four of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA); which is 'reducing underlying risk factors' such as poverty reduction and mitigating environmental degradation in South Asia, indicating inadequate commitment and slow progress towards sustainable development. SADR10 calls for an urgent need for a paradigm shift in development to become people and environment sensitive and inclusive. The new concept of 'Green Growth' which aims for economic development with ecological efficiency for the Asia Pacific region is seen as promising alternative in the SADR 2010; while arguing that the models should have the characteristics of being inclusive, focused on poverty and vulnerability reduction, and lead to sustainable and equitable development.

This is the third South Asia Disaster Report by Duryog Nivaran. The report attempts to explore the added dimension that climate change brings to addressing disaster risk reduction across the region, which will have direct implications in the current development and DRR initiatives and thus tries to unveil the specific recommendations for practitioners and policy makers.

The report consists of two parts.

Part I examines;

• The politics and anthropogenic drivers and systems that have led to climate change
• Increased disaster and climate risk in South Asia and how it is going to affect the nature based livelihoods on which so many South Asians rely
• Interrelationship between the casual factors that lead to a heightening of people's vulnerabilities

Part II explores;

• Possible solutions based on South Asian experience
• The Adaptive Livelihoods Framework - A practical framework for practitioners and tools to operationise it
• Strategies for the inclusion of DRR and CCA into development, especially green growth, targeting the policy makers and planners