Climate crisis disasters are happening at the rate of one a week, though most draw little international attention and work is urgently needed to prepare developing countries for the profound impacts, the UN has warned.

Catastrophes such as cyclones Idai and Kenneth in Mozambique and the drought afflicting India make headlines around the world. But large numbers of “lower impact events” that are causing death, displacement and suffering are occurring much faster than predicted, said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on disaster risk reduction. “This is not about the future, this is about today.”

This means that adapting to the climate crisis could no longer be seen as a long-term problem, but one that needed investment now, she said. “People need to talk more about adaptation and resilience.”

Estimates put the cost of climate-related disasters at $520bn a year, while the additional cost of building infrastructure that is resistant to the effects of global heating is only about 3%, or $2.7tn in total over the next 20 years.

Mizutori said: “This is not a lot of money [in the context of infrastructure spending], but investors have not been doing enough. Resilience needs to become a commodity that people will pay for.” That would mean normalising the standards for new infrastructure, such as housing, road and rail networks, factories, power and water supply networks, so that they were less vulnerable to the effects of floods, droughts, storms and extreme weather.

Until now, most of the focus of work on the climate crisis has been on “mitigation” – jargon for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and not to be confused with mitigating the effects of the climate crisis. The question of adapting to its effects has taken a distant second place, in part because activists and scientists were concerned for years that people would gain a false complacency that we need not cut emissions as we could adapt to the effects instead, and also because while cutting emissions could be clearly measured, the question of adapting or increasing resilience was harder to pin down.

Mizutori said the time for such arguments had ran out. “We talk about a climate emergency and a climate crisis, but if we cannot confront this [issue of adapting to the effects] we will not survive,” she told the Guardian. “We need to look at the risks of not investing in resilience.”

Many of the lower-impact disasters would be preventable if people had early warnings of severe weather, better infrastructure such as flood defences or access to water in case of drought, and governments had more awareness of which areas were most vulnerable.

Nor is this a problem confined to the developing world, she said, as the recent forest fires in the US and Europe’s latest heatwave had shown. Rich countries also face a challenge to adapt their infrastructure and ways of protecting people from disaster.

“Nature-based solutions”, such as mangrove swamps, forests and wetlands which could form natural barriers to flooding should be a priority, said Mizutori. A further key problem is how to protect people in informal settlements, or slums, which are more vulnerable than planned cities. The most vulnerable people are the poor, women, children, the elderly, the disabled and displaced, and many of these people live in informal settlements without access to basic amenities.

Regulations on building standards must also be updated for the climate crisis and properly enforced, she said. One of the governance issues cited by Mizutori was that while responsibility for the climate crisis and greenhouse gas emissions was usually held in one ministry, such as the economics, environment or energy department, responsibility for infrastructure and people’s protection was held elsewhere in government.

“We need to take a more holistic view of the risks,” she said.

en ASEAN member countries were represented this week at the opening of a new disaster response center in the Philippines, spearheaded by the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management, or AHA Centre.

To bolster the facility’s response capacity, global humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief committed $500,000 in funding for the procurement and stockpiling of essential emergency materials for deployment in emergencies throughout the ASEAN region.

“For disaster-prone areas, the lessons of preparation, resiliency, and prevention need not be learned again,” said Thomas Tighe, President and CEO of Direct Relief. “That’s why Direct Relief is so very pleased to support these important strengthening efforts with the AHA Centre, which will ensure more people receive support when they most need it.”

“Coordination, collaboration, and partnerships are the cornerstones of effective emergency response operations. It is for these reasons that we continuously expand and broaden our partnership with key players in the humanitarian sector,” said Adelina Kamal, AHA Centre Executive Director.

Kamal added that Direct Relief, which signed a formal agreement with ASEAN’s AHA Centre three years ago, is an important partner for AHA Centre on key initiatives, including during the Central Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia in 2018. “We are positive that this partnership will be one of the most enduring and successful engagements and for this, we are looking forward to a stronger collaboration with Direct Relief,” she said.

In addition to the strategic stockpile located in the Philippines, ASEAN is establishing a network of DELSA stockpiles in Malaysia and Thailand. Direct Relief is also funding and providing disaster relief items in both Malaysia and the Philippines, and has provided medical aid deployed to disasters by the AHA Centre, working with the Malaysian Air Force, from the Malaysian facility.

The new warehouse is strategically located in the Philippines and will enable rapid response to the region’s frequent natural disasters, including typhoons, flooding, landslides and earthquakes.

The Philippines is at high risk from cyclones, earthquakes, floods, landslides, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and wildfires. Since 1990, the Philippines has been affected by 565 natural disasters that have claimed the lives of some 70,000 Filipinos and caused an estimated $23 billion dollars in damages, according to the World Bank.

Working with ASEAN, the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC), and the AHA Centre, Direct Relief will help ensure that high priority relief items are ready to go before a disaster occurs. Similar to Direct Relief’s Hurricane Preparedness Program, where strategic stockpiles of medical aid are pre-positioned in hurricane-prone areas, the strategic stockpiles in the ASEAN region will enable rapid response to disasters.