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south asia
Flooding Kills 1,000+ Across South Asia as Climate Crisis Fuels More Extreme Rain
“We need to confront climate change effectively,” Indonesia's president said.
Dec 01, 2025
More than 1,100 people across South Asia have died after torrential rains fueled by warming temperatures caused widespread flooding and landslides in recent days.
Following days of unprecedented cyclone conditions, people across Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand have been left with their homes destroyed and forced to flee for their lives. A separate cyclone in Sri Lanka has left hundreds more dead.
The worst devastation has been seen in Indonesia, where Cyclone Senyar has claimed over 500 lives as of Sunday. On the island of Sumatra, rescue teams have struggled to reach stranded people as roads have been blocked by mudslides and high floodwaters. Many areas are still reportedly unreachable.
As Reuters reported Monday, more than 28,000 homes have been damaged across the country and 1.4 million people affected, according to government figures. At least 464 were reported missing as of Sunday.
Other countries in the region were also battered. In Thailand, the death toll was reported at 176 as of Monday, and more than 3 million people are reported to be affected. The worst destruction has been in the southern city of Hat Yai, which on November 21 alone experienced 335mm of rain, its single largest recorded rainfall in over 300 years.
At least two more have been killed in Malaysia, where nearly 12,000 people still remain in evacuation centers.
Sri Lanka has witnessed similar devastation in recent days from another storm, Cyclone Ditwah, that formed around the same time as Senyar. Floods and mudslides have similarly killed at least 330 people, and destroyed around 20,000 homes, while leaving around a third of the country without electricity. More than 200 people are missing, and over 108,000 are in state-run shelters, officials say.
Work has begun in Indonesia to restore damaged roads, bridges, and telecommunication services. But after he visited survivors in Sumatra, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said that the work will extend beyond merely recovering from the storm.
“We need to confront climate change effectively,” Prabowo told reporters. “Local governments must take a significant role in safeguarding the environment and preparing for the extreme weather conditions that will arise from future climate change.”
Southeast Asia was top-of-mind for many attendees at last month's COP30 climate summit in Brazil. As Winston Chow, a professor of urban climate at Singapore Management University and part of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told the Straits Times, this is because the region "is highly vulnerable to climate change."
"As a whole, it faces multiple climate risks and hazards, such as rising temperatures, sea-level rise, increasing droughts and floods, and the intensification of extreme events like typhoons," he continued.
In recent years, the region has been hit by annual devastating heatwaves, resulting in record-shattering temperatures. In Myanmar, where temperatures exceeded 110°F last April, Radio Free Asia reported that 1,473 people died from extreme heat in just one month.
Floods have likewise grown more deadly in recent years. Just this month, floods killed dozens more people in Vietnam, and a pair of typhoons killed hundreds more in the Philippines and forced over a million people to evacuate their homes.
While it's difficult to determine the extent to which any one disaster was caused by climate change, in aggregate, they are growing more intense as the planet warms.
"As the world’s oceans and atmosphere warm at an accelerating rate due to the rise in greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, tropical cyclones are expected to become more intense," explained Steve Turton, an adjunct professor of environmental geography at CQUniversity Australia in The Conversation on Sunday. "This is because cyclones get their energy from warm oceans. The warmer the ocean, the more fuel for the storm."
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, October 2025 was the third-warmest October on record globally and had above-average tropical cyclone activity.
"The warming atmosphere is supercharging the global water cycle, and peak rainfall rates are increasing," Turton said. "When more rain falls in a short time, flash flooding becomes more likely."
At COP30, protesters from across Southeast Asia assembled to demand action from global leaders. On November 10, shortly after her home in Manila was battered by a pair of typhoons, 25-year-old activist Ellenor Bartolome savaged corporations and world leaders who have continued to block global action to reduce fossil fuel usage.
“It gets worse every year, and for every disaster, it is utterly enraging that we are counting hundreds of bodies, hundreds of missing people... while the elite and the corporations are counting money from fossil fuels," she told attendees as they entered the conference.
Ultimately, many climate activists and scientists left the conference enraged yet again, as the final agreement stripped out all language related to fossil fuels.
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Hope Is Not a Strategy: The Urgent Need for India and Pakistan to De-escalate
May 10, 2025
The heinous terrorist attack near Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22 and the retaliatory May 6 missile and drone attacks by India, including on targets in Pakistani territory, have created the conditions for a dangerous escalation of hostilities between these two nuclear-armed states.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as well as leaders from other key countries, including China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have called for urgent, direct dialogue leading to immediate de-escalation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Nevertheless, the danger of a wider war has not yet been abated.
So far, President Trump has apparently only offered vague words of hope that a more serious crisis can be averted. "They've gone tit-for-tat, so hopefully they can stop now," Trump said at the White House on May 7, adding he knew both sides "very well" and wanted "to see them work it out." He added: "And if I can do anything to help, I will be there."
But given what is at stake, hope is not enough.
India has accused Pakistan of direct involvement in the terrorist attack through Islamist militant organizations it says have the backing of Islamabad. Pakistan has denied involvement and condemned the terror attack. But, following India’s missile volley, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said India must “suffer the consequences” for the attack and authorized “corresponding action,” which could trigger a chain reaction of strikes and counterstrikes against important military and political targets on each side.
With approximately 170 nuclear warheads each, India and Pakistan have enough nuclear firepower to obliterate the other; Pakistan retains the option to use nuclear weapons first against non-nuclear military threats. In recent days, Pakistan has continued to issue inflammatory statements hinting at potential nuclear use.
Following India's April 24 announcement regarding the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, Pakistan declared that it would react with "full force across the complete spectrum of national power," which is a not-so-veiled reference to the possible use of nuclear weapons.
Speaking to Pakistani TV channel Geo News Wednesday, Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said: "If they [India] impose an all-out war on the region and if such dangers arise in which there is a stand-off, then at any time a nuclear war can break out."
Any use of nuclear weapons in a conflict involving nuclear-armed states will likely lead to a wider nuclear war. Such a catastrophe in South Asia, one of the most populous areas of the world, would produce a catastrophe with regional and global effects beyond imagination.
A 2019 study published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists estimates tens of millions of people would be killed, "many major cities largely destroyed and uninhabitable, millions of injured people needing care, and power, transportation, and financial infrastructure in ruins," and the soot that would be ejected into the atmosphere by an India-Pakistan nuclear war would adversely affect the global climate.
The unfolding crisis highlights the reality that the possession and buildup of nuclear arsenals, the perpetuation of nuclear deterrence strategies, and threat of use of nuclear weapons by any state -- whether considered a friend or foe -- is an existential danger to international peace and security.
Senior U.S. leaders, including some presidents, have played an important and sometimes direct role in defusing earlier crises that could have led to nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly “emphasized the need for immediate de-escalation” in separate calls with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif and India’s external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. These efforts are encouraging but not likely sufficient to avoid a spiraling, out-of-control crisis, which continues to worsen.
The most senior officials in the Trump administration, as well as Chinese leaders who have greater influence with Pakistan, will need to more actively and directly press both sides to refrain from issuing further threats or engaging in further military strikes against civilian or military targets -- whether that be in the form of ballistic missile attacks, drone attacks, or artillery bombardments across the line of control -- which could lead to disaster.
In addition, a second UN Security Council meeting this month on the topic should be scheduled to foster a serious dialogue on off-ramps, to increase the pressure on India and Pakistan to avoid further hostilities, and to explore options for longer-terms exchanges of views on how to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war in the region.
Since the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of 1998, India continues to steadily develop more advanced nuclear weapons delivery systems while Pakistan produces more fissile material and new and longer-range missile capabilities in the name of “full spectrum deterrence” against India.
If and when this latest and immediate risk of escalation between India and Pakistan is averted, responsible global leaders need to implement a more comprehensive, balanced, and pro-active strategy to reduce nuclear risks in South Asia and bring India and Pakistan into the global nuclear disarmament enterprise.
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'Escalation Risks Catastrophe': Restraint Urged as Pakistan Vows to Avenge Indian Strikes
"An armed conflict between India and Pakistan would be catastrophic for the world and must be avoided at all costs," warned U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
May 07, 2025
Observers around the world sounded the alarm Wednesday over the risks of escalation between nuclear neighbors after Pakistan retaliated for Indian airstrikes that reportedly killed over 30 civilians including children in response to last month's Pahalgam massacre in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
The Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that India bombed six sites in Punjab's Sialkot and Bahawalpur, as well as Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday night as part of Operation Sindoor, a response to the April 22 militant attack on a tourist site in Pahalgam that killed 26 people. India blamed Pakistan for supporting "cross-border terrorism" after a front group of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba claimed responsibility for the attack.
Officials in Islamabad said the Indian strikes this week skilled 31 civilians, including several children. In retaliation, Pakistan carried out artillery attacks across the so-called Line of Control on the border with India. The shelling reportedly killed at least 15 civilians. In a televised address, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attacks a "reply" to India's airstrikes.
"When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Pakistani forces also shot down five Indian warplanes and attacked several Indian checkpoints, according to Pakistani military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry.
On Wednesday, Sharif claimed his government offered to cooperate with India to investigate the Pahalgam attack.
"Instead, they fired missiles inside our territory, thinking we would back down and will not retaliate," he said of India, vowing that "every drop of blood" will be avenged. Sharif added that India "must suffer the consequences" for its "cowardly" attacks.
Mirza Waheed, a Kashmiri journalist and award-winning novelist, told Democracy Now! on Wednesday that "this is a dangerous escalation."
Asked about the increasingly Hindu nationalist rule of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Waheed said "it is a different regime" than under previous New Delhi administrations, one that is "more open to armed response."
Noting that civilians have borne the brunt of cross-border clashes between Indian and Pakistani forces, Waheed said, "When elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled."
Foreign Policy South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman noted on social media that "India's strike on Pakistan is of much greater scale than the one in 2019."
"Pakistan's response, which according to many reports included downing several Indian jets, has also exceeded the scale of 2019," he added. "They're already higher up the escalatory ladder than any time in '19 crisis."
Echoing Wednesday's warning from a Nobel Peace Prize-winning nonproliferation group, British Green Party Member of Parliament Ellie Chowns said: "I am deeply alarmed by the overnight strikes between India and Pakistan and the tragic loss of civilian lives on both sides. As two nuclear-armed neighbors, escalation risks catastrophe."
"I urge both governments to step back from the brink in order to prioritize dialogue and lasting peace," Chowns added.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it is "concerned about the current developments" between the two nations. China controls about 15% of Kashmir.
"China opposes all forms of terrorism. We call on both India and Pakistan to prioritize peace and stability, remain calm and restrained, and avoid taking actions that further complicate the situation," the ministry said. "China finds India's military operation early this morning regrettable… India and Pakistan are and will always be each other's neighbors. They're both China's neighbors as well."
In the United States—which backed Pakistan's 1971 genocide in Bangladesh that ended following an Indian invasion—President Donald Trump called the escalating situation between the nuclear neighbors "a shame."
"I hope it ends very quickly," Trump added, offering to mediate a deescalation between the two countries, as the U.S. has repeatedly done in the past.
U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on social media that "an armed conflict between India and Pakistan would be catastrophic for the world and must be avoided at all costs."
"The United States and our allies should be doing everything we can to stop another escalation and pursue all possible diplomatic avenues to resolve this peacefully," Omar asserted.
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