Climate extremes are testing the limits of food and energy systems in Asia and the Pacific. Floods destroy crops and infrastructure. Droughts reduce agriculture productivity, cut hydropower output and disrupt electricity supply. Heatwaves simultaneously affect livestock, raise energy demand for cooling and stress public health systems. These shocks are not isolated and are compounding across sectors. 

Resilience must now be understood as a system-level imperative. Food, energy and disaster risk are deeply interlinked in the face of climate change. A single shock in one sector often ripples across others. The climate–energy–food nexus offers a way to understand and govern this complexity; replacing reactive, siloed responses with anticipatory and integrated risk management and aligned investments. ESCAP is supporting this transition by working with disaster, environment, energy and agriculture ministries in Bhutan, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic and  Mongolia to mainstream climate and disaster risk into energy and agriculture planning through digital tools, technical assistance and institutional capacity building.

Early warning and loss and damage as strategic enablers

Integrated early warning systems and loss and damage analytics are playing a critical role in operationalizing the nexus approach for more effective resilience building. When climate forecasts are tailored to sector-specific needs, they can trigger anticipatory actions such as demand management in energy or crop protection measures in agriculture. Heat alerts tied to energy use, for example, allow utilities to prevent overloads and protect supply. Systems that link sectoral protocols to forecast thresholds reduce economic losses in infrastructure and agriculture.

At the same time, spatial analysis of loss and damage enables governments to identify the most affected regions and sectors. ESCAP is working with countries to generate these analytics using national data, climate scenarios, and geospatial overlays. This not only strengthens national resilience strategies but also supports access to international finance mechanisms such as the Loss and Damage Fund and other support from the Santiago Network. Country-led evidence is becoming an essential criterion for mobilizing finance, especially in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and energy. 

By embedding both early warning and loss and damage data into national planning, countries are not only reducing current risks but building the foundation for sustained, scalable resilience. These entry points enable practical coordination between ministries and unlock higher returns on resilience investments.

Rewiring risk governance through tools, data, and planning

Ministries across the region are beginning to adopt this nexus approach. In Bhutan, Lao PDR and Mongolia, where climate and disaster impacts are heavily affecting the energy and agrifood sectors, ESCAP has convened national workshops that bring together energy, agriculture, climate and disaster authorities to build shared risk baselines and co-develop forward-looking strategies. Participants discussed how risk-informed planning can be integrated into sector mandates and institutional workflows.

Supporting these shifts is a suite of digital tools developed by ESCAP. The Risk and Resilience Portal provides national planners with downscaled climate projections and hazard overlays that can be used in infrastructure, agriculture zoning and resource planning. An energy module developed for the portal visualizes climate risk to hydropower and grid systems. The Asia Pacific Energy Portal serves as a data platform to energy indicators, policies, and infrastructure maps, providing robust support for evidence-based policymaking to improve energy resilience. For agrifood systems, the INFER (Insights on Food system Risk) methodology overlays climate hazard and exposure and vulnerability data to identify hotspots for adaptation investment.

These tools can shape national decisions. Energy authorities can apply climate models to assess future energy system stability and reliability. Agriculture ministries can use climate scenario-based risk maps to inform the design of resilient cropping systems and infrastructure. Integrated governance models have been shown to reduce systemic failures and improve access to adaptation finance. Rather than treating climate and disaster risk as external threats, countries should build them into the very architecture of development planning.

Among the range of climate extremes, the rise in extreme heat is adding urgency to the shift. Global climate models show that the probability of an additional month of extreme heat each year has more than doubled. The impacts are sector-wide affecting power systems, food supply chains, labor productivity and health services. Yet heat is still underrepresented in national early warning systems and adaptation frameworks. In response to this, ESCAP has incorporated heat considerations in its risk and resilience tools to support planning.

Investing where systems intersect

The climate–energy–food nexus is no longer a theoretical concept. It is a practical roadmap for resilience. This transformation is already underway—quietly and deliberately. Governments are aligning around shared risks and co-developing solutions that serve multiple priorities.  

These issues will guide the discussions at the Ninth Session of the Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction, is meeting from 26-28 to be held in November 2025 at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok. Among the issues that delegates will consider is how integrated policies, disaster climate-risk analytics, and regional cooperation can strengthen the resilience of critical infrastructure and safeguard development gains in an era of intensifying weather extremes.

The evidence is clear. The future of resilience will be decided by the actions of today.