Survey shows that disaster-prone Southeast Asia is also best prepared, suggesting that lessons can be learned

BANGKOK– Southeast Asia is one of the regions most vulnerable to natural disasters, but a new analysis released Thursday shows that people there also feel best prepared.

It seems logical that countries in and around the Pacific Ring of Fire, which are vulnerable to earthquakes, typhoons, storm surges and other hazards, would be the best prepared. But the poll conducted by Gallup for the Lloyd’s Register Foundation shows that this is not always the case in other regions.

“Frequent exposure to dangerous situations is not the only factor that determines how prepared people feel,” Benedict Vigers, research consultant at Gallup, told the Associated Press.

The report concludes that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has played a key role in disaster preparedness. Vigers said the region’s broader approach includes widespread and effective early warning systems, expanded community-based approaches and regional cooperation, and good access to disaster finance.

“Southeast Asia’s success in disaster risk reduction can be attributed to its high vulnerability to disasters, its relatively high resilience – from individuals to society as a whole – and the region’s approach to and investment in disaster risk management more broadly,” he said.

Forty percent of respondents in Southeast Asia said they had experienced a natural disaster in the past five years. In South Asia, 36 percent said the same. However, 67 percent of Southeast Asians felt most prepared to protect their families and 62 percent had contingency plans. In South Asia, people felt less prepared, at 49 percent and 29 percent respectively.

Respondents from North America, which is much less prone to disasters than Southeast Asia, reported feeling only slightly less prepared, while respondents in Northern and Western Europe were in the middle range.

The findings from Southeast Asia, which is mostly made up of low- and middle-income countries, suggest that wealth is not a key factor in disaster response and preparation, said Ed Morrow, senior campaigns manager at the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a UK-based global disaster relief charity.

Southeast Asia is “a region from which the world can clearly learn a lot in terms of disaster risk reduction,” he said.

Globally, the country that has been hit by natural disasters more frequently over the past five years is the Philippines, with 87 percent of respondents saying this was the case.

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

Egypt, Kosovo and Tunisia had the lowest shares, each with 7%.

The data comes from the biennial World Risk Poll, with key results from the 2023 survey released in June. Questions on disasters focused on natural hazards rather than conflict or financial disasters, and excluded the coronavirus pandemic.

The surveys were conducted among people aged 15 and over in 142 countries and were based on telephone or face-to-face interviews with about 1,000 or more respondents in each country, except China, where about 2,200 people were contacted online.

The margin of error was between plus/minus 2.2 and 4.9 percentage points, corresponding to an overall confidence level of 95%.

“Our intention is for governments, regulators, companies, NGOs and international bodies to use this freely available data to develop and optimize strategies and interventions that increase people’s safety,” Morrow said.