A United Nations (UN) report released in Indonesia's Bali on Monday identified three key factors that were greatly exposing more people to rising natural hazard impact.

They were unplanned urban development that forces millions of people to live in unsafe human settlements, vulnerable livelihoods with many rural people still depending on agriculture and other natural resources and ecosystem decline when the flow of most ecosystem services was increasing.

"The three risks will be exacerbated by an additional factor, namely climate change impelled by greenhouse gas emissions generated by affluent societies and individuals," said the UN's report released at a disaster risk reduction forum organized jointly by ASEAN, UNISDR and the World Bank in Bali on May 18-20.

Many countries in Asia and the Pacific have seen their economic and social development drastically hindered or even reversed, by natural disasters. Every year and across the region, people lose their assets, their livelihoods, or their lives in types of disaster that are likely to become more frequent or severe as a result of climate change.

"This is the first global report ever which really provides any specific assessment of the low intensity extensive risks in developing countries," said Margareta Wahlstrom, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, adding that it showed that the world needed a radical shift in development practices and planning.

As a priority, the report said, the world should merge disaster risk reduction, poverty reduction and climate change adaptation into a single, coherent and innovative approach.

"Rather than an expense, investing in poverty and disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation should be seen as an investment in building a more secure, stable, sustainable and equitable future," the report said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2009)