- Scientists warn that without climate-informed planning, restored natural buffers and stronger local preparedness, even moderate storms will trigger catastrophic outcomes

ISTANBUL 

More than 1,700 people have died and over a million have been displaced across Asia in recent weeks as floods and landslides swept through densely populated cities, river basins and deforested slopes. Experts warn that the scale of destruction signals a future in which extreme weather becomes more frequent amid a warming climate.

Indonesia and Sri Lanka endured the heaviest losses, with entire districts inundated, transport links severed and economic damage running into billions of dollars. Hundreds remain missing.

Weak early warning systems, aging or unsuitable infrastructure, unchecked urban expansion and the clearing of natural buffers have compounded the fallout, experts told Anadolu.

The Asia-Pacific region, World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said, faces the world’s most intense and frequent cyclone activity, with “record-breaking rainfall, storm surges and floods” that repeatedly displace millions and cause massive economic damage.

Of the more than 1,700 reported deaths in the recent floods, around 836 were recorded in Indonesia and over 600 in Sri Lanka. On Sumatra Island alone, flooding is estimated to have caused more than $4 billion in damage, while Sri Lanka has sought $200 million in emergency assistance from the International Monetary Fund to address the losses.

A ‘new normal’ with climate change

Scientists say the new pattern of devastation emerging across South and Southeast Asia reflects a broader climate shift.

“Climate change is not irrelevant,” Daanish Mustafa, a professor in critical geography at King’s College London, told Anadolu. “One promise of climate change is that all historical trends, averages and normals are irrelevant. What will be the new normal? We don’t know. Are these floods part of the new normal? Probably.”

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, told Anadolu that the devastating floods and landslides across South and Southeast Asia “are part of a broader shift in the region’s climate.”

“Warmer oceans and a warmer atmosphere are now loading storms with far more moisture, so even weak cyclones can produce extreme rainfall,” he said.

He explained that the resulting deluges trigger upstream landslides and downstream flash floods that leave communities with little time to react.

Koll said forecasting of cyclone formation and tracks has improved in recent years, but “the last-mile systems remain the weakest link,” with many local governments lacking landslide maps, early-action protocols, evacuation routes and accessible shelters.

Living on floodplains

Experts said that even without climate change, rapid urbanization has left the region dangerously exposed.

Mustafa pointed to unchecked construction, concrete expansion and high-density settlement in flood plains across the region.

He cited Sri Lanka as a case study, saying large populations in Colombo live “in the lower reaches of the Kelani River, where most devastation has taken place.”

An estimated 3 million people live in the Kelani River Basin, half of which is in the Colombo district, with the population in the vulnerable region growing rapidly.

Although the Kelani is among Sri Lanka’s most regulated rivers, Mustafa said its dams and embankments can worsen impacts when overwhelmed.

Dwikorita Karnawati, former director of Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency, told Anadolu that many of the areas destroyed in Indonesia were built inside zones where rivers naturally expand during heavy rainfall.

“The zone originally belongs to the river to flow there,” she said. “When we live there, we stay within the zone where the river should flow.”

Mustafa said early warning improvements, slope protection, and restrictions on sand mining – particularly in estuaries such as those feeding the Kelani River in Colombo – are needed to avoid the devastation which Asia saw in recent weeks.

Koll added that reducing future losses “will require a shift from reactive measures to proactive, climate-informed planning,” including stronger drainage and embankments, slope stabilization, restored natural buffers like mangroves and forests and community-level evacuation planning.

“Without this, even moderate storms will continue to produce catastrophic outcomes,” he said.

Indonesia’s landslide-prone terrain

Indonesia’s challenge is further compounded by geology.

Dwikorita said the country’s mountains are “very steep, then immediately flat,” a topography that makes them dangerously prone to sudden landslides once saturated.

“That's why landslides … easily occur” and they “occur in many, many spots,” said the Indonesian official, noting that land-use change has increased the frequency and intensity of disasters.

Although she said Indonesia’s disaster-response capacity has improved over recent years, climate change is pushing events to “higher and higher intensity and longer and longer duration,” requiring preparedness “to be much more scaled up.”

She called for strict boundaries for safe and unsafe river zones, a re-evaluation of land-use planning and natural recovery through forestation and expanded vegetation.

“It is a disaster – an environmental disaster. Not only the climate, not only the geology, but an ecosystem disaster,” she said.

Philippines archipelago sees improved early response

The Philippines has shown improvements in early disaster response, experts said, though the country remains among the world’s most exposed to storms.

The archipelago of some 7,000 islands lies in the Pacific Typhoon Belt and faces an average of 20 tropical cyclones each year.

Gerry Bagtasa, professor at the University of the Philippines, said urbanization is likely worsening storm impacts, but public trust in the national weather agency and local disaster managers “has been high in recent years.”

Casualties this year remain far lower than in 2013, when Typhoon Haiyan killed around 6,300 people.

Still, vulnerabilities remain acute.

Gwen Pang, secretary general of the Philippine Red Cross, said climate change “is playing a major part in worsening the intensity and frequency of storms.”

“The natural balance has been shaken. Nature is reacting differently. It may be likened to a body that has been subjected to diseases, thereby causing the body to gradually or even abruptly deteriorate,” she said.

This year's typhoons, which triggered a state of national calamity, also reignited public anger over alleged corruption in nearly 10,000 flood-control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9.5 billion), prompting protests nationwide.

Toward climate resilience

Experts say that while some South Asian nations have made strides in early-warning systems and disaster response, the speed and intensity of climate change are outpacing these gains. Recent improvements, they said, show that progress is possible – but not nearly fast enough for the scale of what is coming.

Mustafa added that the disasters of recent weeks should be treated as a warning of what unchecked warming will bring.

As global temperatures touch record-breaking levels, he said, it would be prudent to “expect more extreme events going forward … something about which human societies are in denial.”

Experts noted that the trajectory of the Philippines, where improved coordination has reduced casualties even as storms intensify, shows that preparedness can save lives. But they cautioned that without deeper, long-term investment in land-use reform, reforestation, climate-informed infrastructure and strong local governance, Asia’s exposure will continue to rise.