Every month, disasters caused by extreme weather kill more people in South and Southeast Asia. In January, a landslide in Indonesia¡¯s West Java followed heavy rain and led to dozens of deaths ¡ª including 23 Indonesian marines out on a training exercise.
The end of 2025 was punctuated by similar depressing headlines. Cyclone Ditwah killed over 600 in Sri Lanka in December; a few days earlier, Cyclone Senyar¡¯s toll in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand had crossed 1,000.
Senyar formed in the Malacca Strait; that¡¯s an area very atypical for such storms. The people of South and Southeast Asia are living the reality of out-of-control climate change ¡ª a problem largely caused by the rest of the world, but one they¡¯ve been left on their own to deal with.
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