Five Asian nations to study flood, climate risks

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - A new U.N. course will help five Asian nations cope with a predicted worsening of floods due to climate change that may threaten cities from Beijing to Hanoi, the U.N. University said on Sunday.

Experts from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Nepal and Sri Lanka would take part from November in a three-month course run by the U.N. University in Thailand to help map risks of downpours, rivers breaking their banks and rising sea levels.

If successful, the course could be expanded to other regions.

"Catastrophic floods may become much more common," Srikantha Herath, senior academic officer at the U.N. University in Tokyo, told Reuters. "Asia suffers most from floods of all the regions and we want to prepare for what may happen."

The courses, gathering two-four experts from each nation, would identify risks of floods, potential economic damage, and help work out everything from better designs for dykes to better weather forecasts and flood warnings.

Flooding linked to monsoon rains killed more than 3,000 people and affected more than 100 million people in south Asia this year with damage to property estimated in the billions of dollars, the U.N. University said.

Many cities such as Beijing could be flooded under certain storm conditions, it said. Global warming, mainly blamed on human burning of fossil fuels that releases greenhouse gases, is likely to be making matters worse.

The course would examine examples such as a 1991 storm in the Philippines that dumped 50 cm (20 inches) of rain in six hours on Ormoc City, the Philippines, killing 5,000 people.