What made the floods in South East Asia so deadly? - Asia Specific podcast, BBC World Service

Asia Pacific is such a manufacturing hub that you want your big cities, your factories to be on the coastline so you can export those goods. The problem comes if you're getting more of this extreme weather, then those ports, those coastlines, they're the ones that are going to get hit hardest when it comes to flooding. From the Philippines to Vietnam, Sri Lanka to Thailand, Malaysia to Indonesia, there've been deadly and devastating floods in 2025. The death toll across South East Asia has edged up towards 2000,

with the spread of diseases and poor access to medical care. causing further problems. But aside from heavy rain, experts are also pointing at deforestation and illegal logging. for making the landslides worse in the hardest-hit country, Indonesia. So is a changing climate a factor in these recent flood events. and what can be done to mitigate future natural disasters? I'm Mariko in Singapore. and this is Asia Specific from the BBC World Service.

Twice a week we unpack Asia Pacific stories with those who know them best. And today I have Graihagh Jackson and Jordan Dunbar, both from the BBC's Climate Question podcast. It's so good to have you both on Asia Specific. Thank you so much. I want to start with a question that some of our viewers. and listeners might have, which is, do we know for sure, is there evidence that climate change actually made the most recent floods. in this part of the world worse? Graihagh.

Yes, we have just in the last couple of days, in fact, there's a group at Imperial College London. in the UK that study this called the World Weather Attribution, and they were looking at precisely this. What was the fingerprint of climate change on this disaster? And they found that the rains were made more intense by climate change. But they also found there were lots of other factors involved, things like urbanisation, deforestation, as well as these sort.

of cyclical weather patterns like La Nina and the Indian Ocean Dipole. So there were lots of things happening. and contributing to make the rains more extreme than they were. But just to say, this sort of more intensification of rainfall, of cyclones. is sort of broadly in line with what we expect with a warmer world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. publishes this huge report every sort of half decade or decade or so. And the most recent one shows. that actually cyclones, tropical cyclones, typhoons, hurricanes,

they're all the same thing, depending on where you are in the world. But they are becoming more intense and more dangerous. as a result of climate change. So that means higher wind speeds and that also means more rainfall as well. I feel like every time I've covered this topic on a, you know, as a news segment in three minutes, we just kind of say things like warmer oceans, warmer atmosphere, which means more rain and therefore heavier rainfall. But can you just tell me scientifically how that works?

Yeah, sure. So basically, climate change means on average. our planet is getting much, much warmer. And much of that heat that's being trapped. is then going into the ocean, right? And that's important because that means. that hurricanes, typhoons, tropical cyclones, when they do form, they're more intense because they draw on that heat energy from the ocean. to form and push forward. So that's the first part of the equation. The second part of the equation is in a warmer world, more water can evaporate.

It can evaporate from leaves, from forests, on land, but it can also evaporate from the ocean. And what that means is you have more water vapour in the atmosphere, and then more potential for that water vapour to rain back down. So broadly, what you're seeing is two things, really. It's the fact that oceans are warmer and therefore more intense. Hurricanes and storms can form. But the second factor is there is more water vapour in the atmosphere, with more potential for it to fall down in a very intense capacity.

I want to specifically talk about Asia Pacific, because it feels like this region, because of infrastructure, because some of the cities are densely populated, they get affected by. these extreme weather events even harder than the rest of the world. Can you explain that to me? Jordan. Yeah. Well, if you think about where you're sitting now, in Singapore and many of the big cities in Asia Pacific, what you have is based on the coastline or along rivers. So you're surrounded by water. There's lots of mountains nearby too.

And that's because of design, right? Because Asia's Pacific is such a manufacturing hub. that you want your big cities, your factories to be on the coastline so you can export those goods. The problem comes if you're getting more of this extreme weather, then those ports, those coastlines, they're the ones that are going. to get hit hardest when it comes to flooding the IPCC. So that's the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. in one of their big new reports. When they're looking at climate risks, they said that Asia was.

the most exposed region to sea level rise in the world. And that's because in terms of the number of people living. in low elevation, so living in low lying areas beside the coastal zones. and the number of people that will be exposed to one. in 100 years storm surge events. So that's when the sea rises up and the wind pushes it in. So you've got very high tides coming into those coastlines. So that's one problem.

But there's another one that they point out which is really interesting, which is subsidence that's sinking. So Asia Pacific cities in particular South East Asia are sinking. So you've got rising sea levels and. you've got sinking cities along the coastline, which as you can imagine, makes flooding much, much worse. You've got lots of people living in cities. compared to other parts of the world, and rapid economic development, which meant those cities were built really, really quickly, have quite a lot of informal settlements. still on the outside of them.

Maybe regulations weren't enforced and how you build them. And so the infrastructure, the pipes, the canals, the pumping stations, they're not there to deal with these one in 100 year storms. Yeah, I was reading that Singapore is also affected by that kind. of sinking effect, and that a third of the country would actually sink in less than a century. But can you tell me, are there any other reasons. that these cities like Bangkok, where you were recently, weren't you? But other cities like Jakarta, in this part of the world,

are there other factors contributing to these cities sinking? Absolutely. So one of the biggest ones in Bangkok. and Jakarta and other cities is groundwater extraction. So when they were throwing up these buildings during rapid economic booms. instead of waiting for mains water supply to come to get the licence, it was cheaper and faster to sink wells into the ground. and suck out that groundwater. But the problem was, is you suck out that water,

then there's nothing else underneath, so it starts to sink. And if you look out your window now in Singapore or Manila or Jakarta. or Bangkok, you'll notice that you have a forest of skyscrapers. Land is so valuable that instead of going out, you need to go up. But those skyscrapers are extremely heavy. So you've taken out that layer beneath. and you're putting on something really heavy on top. So it's going to start sinking even faster. And you also, on the other hand, not just the coastline as well.

If you think about particularly in Bangkok, you've got river water coming from the mountains to the north. and meeting the sea. While the city is sinking. So, Graihagh, just just for clarification, for viewers and listeners wondering, it doesn't mean. that Asian seas are rising faster than the rest of the world, but it's because of the infrastructure. that we're experiencing this rising sea levels. Is that right, Graihagh? Um, well, actually, sea level is rising a little bit faster in Asia,

so you've kind of got the double whammy effect, right? You've got the subsidence, the land subsidence, and the sinking on top of faster sea level rise as well. So when we look at the data that we have between 1993 and 2018, we can see that sea level is rising in Asia, specifically around about 3.5 to 3.6 millimetres a year, and the global average is around 3.2mm a year. So we're talking about just under half a millimeter more in Asia.

per year, which might not sound much, but when you add it up over decades, it really does add up. And combined with the subsidence, it becomes a really, really big problem. And what I find really interesting is the fact that there are lots. of different contributing factors as to. why sea level rise sort of is quite uneven around the world as well. It's not just to do with the sinking. There's things like wind and evaporation and temperature. that all sort of determine, uh, how how much the sea level rises in some parts of the world.

Another there's also gravity. that's very different in different parts of the world. And that kind of pushes and pulls the ocean around. And the other sort of important point, which I think is always. really surprising, is the fact that oceans aren't rising, uh, just because of things like the glaciers and the ice sheets melting. The majority of sea level rise we actually see is from thermal expansion. So the ocean getting hotter and expanding. And again, in Asia, we say higher in certain pockets,

we see higher levels of ocean warming than in other parts of the world. So combine all those factors together with people living on the coast, the land sinking, the sea level rising. We're seeing going to see a massive problem if not already. Things like billions of dollars in damage, but also things like massive migration on a scale. we've probably not seen in a very, very long time, if not before. I want to go back to the impact of the most recent floods, which affected so many countries in this part of the world,

countries like Indonesia, for example, a lot of residents were blaming things like deforestation, illegal logging, mining for the landslides. that those flooding caused as well. Jordan, can you just talk us through how that works in terms of I mean, we're not just talking about illegal logging, but, you know, in terms of deforestation and how that made those flooding. and also the landslides much worse. It's all about dealing with water.

And if you imagine the journey of rain. So when you have these typhoons and cyclones. and you get this really intense rain where loads of rain falls very quickly, it's coming and hitting off the ground. If you've got a mountainside, for instance, which is very steep, that's going to flow off quickly. However, if it's covered in trees and plants, that will mean that the soil is more able to absorb that water. and the water gets blocked, it gets slowed. So it makes its way into the rivers, which it naturally would much more slowly take away those trees,

take away those plants. The ground, then the soil can't absorb it as quickly. And so it just runs off. It gets into those rivers really, really fast. The rivers then break their banks. It flows down to the sea. And so you don't have this absorbent effect that would slow the flood water. Now when you have massive cyclones like this, you will get flooding. But if you deforest and take away the slowing effect, if you cover it in concrete, for instance,

you're going to make that flooding worse and the damage worse. What can South East Asian governments do in order to mitigate, in a future natural disasters like we've seen over the past month. I want both of your opinions. One of the big things that I've been working on when I was. in Thailand was this idea of adaptation, which is the other side, because we're seeing the effects happening right now. We're not talking about 2050 or even 2030. We're seeing the effects now. So what governments can do.

and what they are doing, particularly in the big cities, is trying to deal with these more intense storms. and more intense rainwater. So there's two sides to that. There's one called hard infrastructure solutions. That's like your big water pumps, your giant canals, trying to get the water out of these cities as quickly as possible. But the other side that's becoming more popular is this idea. of soft infrastructure. Nature-based solutions. So if you imagine a sponge and what it does to water the way. it's able to absorb it.

In China, they came up with this concept of sponge cities. And that's something they've been doing in Bangkok, which is taking land. in the middle of the city and creating ponds and wetlands, and then huge grass-planted areas which underneath have massive water tanks. so it can absorb the water and keep it there before releasing it out slowly. But all of those cost money. And obviously Bangkok's a very rich city. It's an economic engine, but it's going to be tougher for other cities to try and have that adaptation.

There's also a lot of things that you can do outside of cities. So he touched very briefly on nature solutions. And, you know, we had part of the problem was the fact. that trees were cut down. And then the land upstream of these cities wasn't able. to absorb the water as much. So we can think about nature reservations, you know, and also things like mangrove forests, which also protect cities not just. from more intense rainfall by absorbing that water, but also things like storm surges, which are likely to become higher.

in a warmer world as well as we get more of these intense cyclones. I was reading about how Singapore is building this artificial island called Long Island in order to, I guess, prevent. And they're going to build it higher than the the current land. so that it can actually stop the, I guess, the floods. from coming in to Singapore. But you know, the price tag that I was reading was like 100 billion USD, which you can't expect many countries to be able to afford. Jordan, you were in Bangkok recently looking into these issues.

What were what were the reaction there. in terms of this ongoing debate of who should pay for climate solutions, tackling climate change, climate change? Well, it was fascinating for me in Bangkok was this these city is one. of the experts said that they've always been a water people and a water city. It's only in recent years that it's kind of been like concrete. versus the river and the sea. And so the private sector,

particularly those big skyscrapers we were talking about, they actually advertise things like the power of their water pumps. So it's a penthouse with great views. You've got a waterproof underground car park, but we've also got this huge water pump. So they acknowledge the flooding is just going to happen, that the river is going to break its banks, but the private sector is doing their own adaptation. and actually advertising that to people to say, you know, your your Rolls Royce or whatever isn't going to get wet in this building.

So it has mostly been private sector for the moment. The World Bank has given some money for different hard infrastructure schemes, but one of the most ambitious ones, shall we say. I was speaking to the ex-deputy Prime Minister. He was in charge of the country when. the really, really, really terrible floods in the 2000 happened and. he and a group of businessmen have put together this proposal to build. like a string of islands in the Gulf of Thailand.

And that's to try and break the wave power of those storm surges to try. and help deal with the coastal erosion and the sea level rise. They their proposal was very much that you would have tourist sites. and airports to be able to get investment. So they weren't looking for, you know, government money. or kind of climate money. It was very much the private sector going ahead and dealing with this. And I think that's because these are economic engines.

Your Jakartas, your Manilas, your Shanghais. They are going to the private sector will have to move forward to try. and adapt because they're just so expensive and precious. It's kind of tackling this huge challenge while making sure. that it actually gets done properly. That's also a challenge in this part of the world. Yeah, and we talked about groundwater extraction, making that subsidence, that sinking worse. And that's a big thing. Lots of countries, lots of cities said, right, no more groundwater extraction. You have to stop it. But it wasn't enforced.

So it still went on. And it's really important when you have those regulations that. the authorities have the resources to actually check for it and monitor it. And definitely in Bangkok, they've seen a massive decline. in the amount of groundwater extraction, but that only came after the enforcement rather than the regulation. So I think that is really important. You can put forward laws, but if the government's not given the resources to help people monitor it. and actually make sure it's carried out, will it actually happen?

So Indonesia is building another city. You know, we're talking about possible solutions, but at the same time, will there will we come to a point where we just have to face the reality. and maybe, you know, move away from those coastlines. Our children's generation, will they actually have to face a reality when they have to retreat. instead of finding a solution to tackle this? Yeah, I think this is a really important point, right. Because there's only so much adaptation.

There's only so much you can do to build your way out of these situations, especially if the land is also sinking at the same time. So we do see these sorts of policies in place. You know, I'm thinking about Pacific islands like Tuvalu, which has also got agreements with places like Australia and New Zealand, where citizens can relocate if they want to, because by the end of this century, maybe next century, they may not exist anymore. If they do, they'll be facing such extreme weather. and extreme environments.

It's sort of become uninhabitable with saltwater intrusion. There's no fresh water, all those sorts of things. It's a very sad and real reality for many people. And you mentioned Jakarta. You know, that's obviously decided that, yes, in fact, uh, there is no future. There will not be a future there. And they're rebuilding a city in Kalimantan. So I think there is a point at which we need to recognize. that maybe we can't build our way out of this. And that's not to say things are hopeless, you know. You look where we were ten years ago in terms of our climate targets.

and what we're on track for. And we are on track for, like, you know, three or four degrees of warming, maybe even five. if you go back 15 years ago. Right. By the end of the century, this is now, you know, looking at the most recent data that came out from the UN last month, we're on track for 2.3 to 2.5 degrees Celsius. So we are lessening and reducing that temperature incline. It's not fast enough, many critics would say, and it's not in line with our internationally-agreed targets,

but it's progress. And Mariko, Asia Pacific, where you are, is a really interesting place in terms of progress at a more local level. If you look at air pollution in mainland China. and what, you know, Shanghai and Beijing and so on used to be like, and now how clean they are. If you look at public transport in Singapore or in Japan, if you look at the amount of electric vehicles that have gone on. to the roads in Vietnam and Thailand and so on.

You can see that there is real progress happening, even if it is slow at this top international level. Your region is moving ahead in so many different ways. It might not be fast enough, but I think people can see and renewable energy too, that those changes are happening around you. China has been quite a leader in this renewable energy sector, hasn't it? And they're really trying to switch off the coal plantation even though, you know, they can't just, you know, stop it altogether straight away.

But they are definitely moving towards the right direction. Yeah. Well it's very interesting. because China does keep building thermal coal plants, while at the same time putting in more renewables and more nuclear. than anywhere else on Earth at a faster pace than anywhere else on Earth. And I think what's really important there is that. their government policies have reduced the price of renewables globally, particularly in the Asia Pacific region.

So those countries around that are trading with China, they're going to be able to get that technology cheaper. because of the amount that's being put into China. You can see it's spreading around the region and coming out from China. So you can see real progress being made there. Well, it's nice to end this discussion. Not all doom and gloom, but there have been some positive progress. Of course, this is an ongoing issue, so we would love to have you back on Asia Specific. But for now, thank you Graihagh. And thank you Jordan.

Thank you. Thank you so much. You've been watching Asia Specific from the BBC World Service with me, Mariko Oi in Singapore. If you have any questions or thoughts on what we've covered today. or any other stories from the region, please leave us a comment below. and click like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. But for now, thank you so much for watching and see you next time!