One hazard can trigger another, creating compound risks that spread across communities, infrastructure and systems with regional and global connections.

Governments may still be underestimating the scale of these cascading risks, according to Kamal Kishore, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.

Climate Tracker Asia spoke with Kishore at the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Manila during a visit focused on strengthening disaster preparedness and recovery across Asia.

In the exclusive interview, Kishore urged governments to use the months of lead time provided by El Niño forecasts to identify vulnerable communities, coordinate across water, agriculture, energy and industry, and move resources to the local level.

Beyond El Niño, Kishore pointed to gaps in early warning coverage and Asia-Pacific’s continued struggle to reduce economic losses and infrastructure disruptions. He warned that disasters could cascade through globally connected systems, from data centers and satellites to submarine cables.

He also said anticipatory financing has delivered results over the past decade, yet still accounts for only 1% of global humanitarian spending, highlighting the need for clear triggers and funding mechanisms that allow governments to act before disasters strike.

Watch the full interview on YouTube

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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Preparing early for El Niño

Climate Tracker Asia: We last spoke here in Manila during the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction two years ago. You are back at a very important moment as the region prepares for a possible El Niño, governments confront increasingly interconnected climate risks, and we enter the final years of the Sendai Framework.

You have described the forecast as not just an early warning, but the earliest warning. As climate change intensifies its impacts across water, agriculture, energy, health and food systems, what actions and governance structures does UNDRR recommend so governments can respond early and treat this risk as one interconnected crisis?

Kamal Kishore: As I said earlier, El Niño gives us not just early warning, but the earliest warning, because El Niño is typically forecast with a lead time of several months.

The impacts of El Niño, in terms of extreme weather and climate events in different countries, also pan out over several months. We also know what happened during similar El Niño events in the past in different sectors.

We have time. We have the lead time to prepare and be ready to respond when different kinds of extreme climate and weather events begin to manifest themselves.

My recommendation to governments is threefold.

The first is that it is really important to have an integrated system of planning for responding to El Niño. It is not just about launching a humanitarian response. First of all, we have to do everything we can to minimize the impact.

Here in the Philippines, for example, not all provinces are going to be affected by drought. We know from previous El Niño events that it is only half of them, and we know which ones those are.

But the effects are also not just in agriculture. They affect water resources, agriculture, energy and industry.

Rather than focusing narrowly on one or two sectors, this is not something that should be done only by disaster-risk management or agriculture agencies. It really has to be an integrated response.

Setting up an integrated framework, whether in the form of a task force or any other mechanism depending on the country’s governance context, is really key.

The second thing is that it is really important to start investing time and effort in identifying who is vulnerable, where, in which sectors and in what way.

Unless we do that analysis now, based on what we have learned from previous El Niños, our efforts to reduce losses, and in some cases harness potential benefits, may not be effective.

There may be some parts of the world that normally experience extreme rainfall and flooding but may get less rainfall during El Niño. They may have an opportunity to have better harvests, for example.

It is really important to identify which communities, which sectors and which geographic areas are vulnerable, and how and why they are vulnerable, so that the integrated response can build on that understanding.

Policy instruments cannot be blunt. They really have to be specific to vulnerabilities across different sectors and different parts of a country’s geography.

The third recommendation is to make money, resources and capacity available at the local level.

That is where people know what the specific priorities and opportunities are. If you provide resources, it adds to local initiative, local resourcefulness and local imagination.

We can almost guarantee that those interventions will address real-world problems and not problems that are not fully understood.

Financing before disasters strike

Climate Tracker Asia: You mentioned making money available, but even when governments receive credible forecasts, financing is still often mobilized only after losses have occurred.

What changes are needed within governments and multilateral development banks so anticipatory financing can be released before climate impacts?

Kamal Kishore: The whole issue of anticipatory financing, not just in the context of El Niño but across all hazards, has become very important.

We now have at least 10 years of practice showing that if you provide finance in an anticipatory way, which we used to call forecast-based financing, it leads to good outcomes.

Ten years ago, if somebody said, “Let us give money to a community or a sector in anticipation of an event that has not occurred yet,” people would have said that it did not make sense.

But we have seen over the last 10 years that anticipatory action actually works. How do we scale that now?

Even with this movement on anticipatory action and anticipatory financing, only 1% of total humanitarian spending globally goes to anticipatory action. That has to change.

For that to happen, it is really important to strengthen the reliability of, confidence in and trust in early warning systems, so that we know there is a very high likelihood of something happening.

What will be the parameters of that event? Who will be affected? That information can be used to launch action.

I think there must be a clear definition of the triggers.

The second thing is that it is really important to identify in advance which actions should be funded and which will give us the right kind of outcome. That planning needs to be done as well.

If we have greater trust in triggers, a clear mechanism for when financing is made available, and the plumbing for that money to flow, I think we can really scale anticipatory action.

Good work is happening here in the Philippines, where one of the largest cash-disbursement programs exists.

The Asian Development Bank is also at the forefront of efforts to scale anticipatory action and prearranged finance.

Measuring disaster and climate losses

Climate Tracker Asia: The Philippines is pioneering UNDRR’s new framework for measuring disaster- and climate-related losses to biodiversity and ecosystem services.

How can countries with limited data and technical capacity document these losses without being disadvantaged in accessing loss and damage finance?

Kamal Kishore: Over the long term, there is no substitute for having good data.

It is very tedious and not very attractive or topical work. But it is really important to understand who is affected, where they are affected and in what way.

That gives us a better understanding of risks and a better understanding of who is vulnerable and in what ways.

That investment is necessary. It is necessary not just for accessing international resources, but also for better targeting domestic resources.

Until we have that, we should use whatever mechanisms we have.

There are now AI-based tools that can give us a pretty good understanding of what is being lost and where.

But over the long term, it is really important to have robust data on impacts, both economic and non-economic.

Climate Tracker Asia: Are Indigenous and local knowledge recognized in the framework?

Kamal Kishore: Absolutely.

Indigenous and local knowledge are not optional. They are not an add-on. They are actually the starting point.

Strengthening ASEAN disaster response

Climate Tracker Asia: The Philippines is chairing ASEAN this year and is spearheading the Manila-ASPECT Framework for regional disaster response.

From UNDRR’s perspective, what should the framework contain to ensure faster, science-based and coordinated ASEAN responses to climate-related disasters that cross national borders?

Kamal Kishore: From the UNDRR side, we really commend the evidence-based and science-based approach that the Philippines is promoting.

We hope this is something that will be discussed in depth at ASEAN and will become a basis for a lot of the work that ASEAN is doing on disaster-risk management in a collaborative framework.

Overall, it is the right direction, and we really hope it comes to fruition.

Climate Tracker Asia: ASEAN already has the ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response and the AHA Centre. What specific gap should Manila-ASPECT fill?

Kamal Kishore: I think this evidence-based approach and the greater rigor in bringing science into action are a value addition.

The Philippines has lived experience in doing this across multiple hazards.

Making early warnings actionable

Climate Tracker Asia: That brings us to the Early Warnings for All initiative. With the 2027 deadline approaching, what must change urgently to ensure universal coverage means people have the financing, support, connectivity and social protection needed to act on warnings?

Kamal Kishore: We have made a lot of progress under Early Warnings for All.

More than 130 countries now report having multi-hazard early warning systems. That is great progress.

But there are still one-third of the world’s countries that do not have a multi-hazard early warning system.

I believe that to accelerate progress between now and 2027, there are three things that need to be done.

First, it is really important to mobilize resources for countries that require them, both from international and domestic sources.

Investment in an early warning system is not something you make only once.

You may have a good project that elevates the quality of an early warning system in a particular country, but it needs to be sustained forever.

That requires a predictable way of financing different aspects of early warning systems.

The second area is improving forecasting and early warning for some hazards. We also need to improve access to technology for disseminating warnings.

Right now, fewer than 40 countries across the world have implemented cell broadcast, and we know cell broadcast is the gold standard for dissemination.

Why is it only 40 countries? It should be 100%.

We need to address those gaps in coverage of certain hazards and dissemination technologies.

Finally, I would like to see much greater national ownership of early warning systems across the board.

This is something that needs to be seen not as a project, but as a permanent social good for society.

It is not something you do once. It is something you build for society forever as a common good.

Asia-Pacific’s unfinished Sendai agenda

Climate Tracker Asia: We are also nearing the Sendai Framework’s 2030 deadline.

Which targets need the most attention in Asia-Pacific, and what progress should governments demonstrate at the 2027 Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai?

Kamal Kishore: In Asia-Pacific, we have made a lot of progress.

Mortality from disasters has come down significantly, in some countries by up to 65% decade on decade.

More countries now than ever before have national and subnational strategies for disaster-risk reduction.

If I use a traffic-light system, those are the two targets that are green.

There are three targets that are deep red and are of big concern.

We are not reducing the number of people affected by disasters. We are not reducing economic losses. We are not reducing infrastructure disruptions.

We have made progress in early warning systems and improved international cooperation. You can call those two yellow.

For Asia-Pacific, the next leap is to reduce economic losses.

To do that, it is really important that disaster-risk reduction is embedded in everything we do, in all development planning and all investments.

Every school, every hospital, every highway, every airport, every railroad and every renewable-energy project we build must be resilient to the impacts of different kinds of hazards.

If we did that, we would be able to move beyond saving lives to also saving livelihoods and ensuring that everyone in this region flourishes.

The risks governments may be underestimating

Climate Tracker Asia: Of all the compounding climate risks facing Asia-Pacific, what is one thing governments are still underestimating?

Kamal Kishore: My big concern is not a single hazard, but when one hazard leads to another hazard, and that leads to another hazard, and it becomes a compound hazard.

Sometimes it affects systems that have not just regional, but global connections.

For example, what happens if our digital infrastructure, such as data centers, submarine cables or satellite systems, is affected by natural hazards?

We are probably not fully recognizing the extent of the risk we have in some of these areas, how systemic that risk is, and the extent to which we need to bring systemic thinking into risk reduction.

It is not enough to reduce risk in a particular location, for a particular community, system or sector.

It is really important that we see the interconnections fully and take a systemic view of disaster-risk reduction.