Disaster-prone Southeast Asia also best prepared, offers lessons: Survey

Southeast Asia is among the regions most prone to natural disasters, but a new analysis released Thursday shows its people also feel the best equipped to deal with them.

It seems logical that the countries in and around the Pacific Ring of Fire, vulnerable to earthquakes, typhoons, storm surges and other dangers, are also the best prepared, but the survey by Gallup for the Lloyd's Register Foundation shows that's not always the case in other regions.

Frequent exposure to hazard isn't the only factor that determines how prepared people feel, Benedict Vigers, a research consultant with Gallup, told The Associated Press.

The report found the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has played a key role in disaster risk reduction, and Vigers said the region's wider approach includes widespread and effective early-warning systems, scaled-up community approaches and regional cooperation, and good access to disaster finance.

Southeast Asia' success in feelings of disaster preparedness can be linked to its high exposure to disasters, its relatively high levels of resilience - from individual people to overall society, and the region's approach to and investment into disaster risk management more broadly, he said.

Forty percent of people surveyed in Southeast Asia said they had experienced a natural disaster in the past five years, while a similar number 36 per cent in Southern Asia said the same. But 67 per cent of Southeast Asians felt among the best prepared to protect their families and 62 per cent had emergency plans, while Southern Asians felt less ready, with 49 per cent and 29 per cent respectively.

Respondents from North America, which is significantly less disaster-prone than Southeast Asia, said they only felt slightly less prepared, while those in Northern and Western Europe were in the middle of the pack.

The results from Southeast Asia, primarily made up of lower-middle-income countries, suggest wealth is not a deciding factor in disaster response and preparation, said Ed Morrow, senior campaigns manager for Lloyd's Register Foundation, a British-based global safety charity.

Southeast Asia is a region that clearly has much to teach the world in terms of preparing for disasters," he said.

Globally, no country ranked higher than the Philippines for having experienced a natural disaster in the past five years, with 87 per cent of respondents saying they had.

It was also among the top four countries where the highest proportion of households have a disaster plan. All were in Southeast Asia: the Philippines (84 per cent), Vietnam (83 per cent), Cambodia (82 per cent) and Thailand (67 per cent), followed by the United States (62 per cent).

Those with the the lowest proportion were Egypt, Kosovo and Tunisia, all with 7 per cent.

The data were drawn from the World Risk Poll, conducted every two years, with the main results from the 2023 survey published in June. Questions on disasters focused on natural hazards instead of conflicts or financial disasters, and excluded the coronavirus pandemic.

Surveys were conducted of people aged 15 and above in 142 countries and based on telephone or face-to-face conversations with approximately 1,000 or more respondents in each country with the exception of China, where some 2,200 people were contacted online.

Margin of error ranged from plus or minus 2.2 to 4.9 percentage points, for an overall 95 per cent confidence level.

It is our intention that this freely available data should be used by governments, regulators, businesses, NGOs and international bodies to inform and target policies and interventions that make people safer, Morrow said.