18 December 2014: The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has issued the Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2014, which shows that economic growth has not regained the levels reached before the global financial crisis, and 60% of the world’s hunger occurs in the region. At the same time, the region is driving global economic recovery.

In the Yearbook, ESCAP reports that one billion people in the region have escaped extreme poverty since 1990, but over 700 million people still remain in extreme poverty, and 933 million people are marginally over the poverty line, living on between US$1.25 and US$2 a day. The region’s growth rate of 3.9% between 2008 and 2012 remains below the pre-crisis level of 5.2%, the report says.

An ESCAP press release highlights Yearbook figures indicating that deaths from natural disasters trebled in the past decade, compared with the decade before it. This was mainly due to a small number of extreme disasters, including the Asian tsunami of December 2004. The region reported over 40% of the world’s natural disasters during the decade 1994-2013, with Southeast Asia being the hardest hit, especially Indonesia and the Philippines.

Shun-ichi Murata, ESCAP, said he anticipates that the emerging Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and associated targets will result in increased data demands for monitoring and accountability. In that context, he said, statistics will be “of critical importance.”