When crises collide, UNDP says people’s safety must shape Asia-Pacific security planning

A new UNDP report, Redefining Security: Development Circuit Breakers for a More Secure Future, argues that security policy needs to account for these everyday pressures.

For a family in Asia and the Pacific, insecurity may arrive as a lost job, an online scam, a bill they cannot pay or a public service that no longer works. Add a flood, heatwave or health emergency, and each problem can make the others harder to manage.

A new UNDP report, Redefining Security: Development Circuit Breakers for a More Secure Future, argues that security policy needs to account for these everyday pressures. It proposes four "development circuit breakers": systems and institutions that help countries absorb shocks before they spread into wider instability.

The report covers a region stretching from Iran and Afghanistan to the Pacific Islands. It says climate shocks, economic insecurity, cybercrime, declining trust in institutions and cross-border illicit trade are major security risks, alongside traditional military threats. For many governments, overlapping crises are becoming the norm, leaving them caught in emergency response instead of prevention.

Security starts with people's daily lives

The report points to the connections between risks that are often handled separately. A climate disaster can disrupt jobs and supply chains; insecure incomes can leave people with little protection when the next shock arrives. Digital networks, financial systems and shared environmental resources carry risks across borders, making them harder for any one country to contain.

The pressure is especially visible among the region's 1.3 billion informal workers, many of whom have little access to social protection, savings or insurance. Asia and the Pacific is also home to 70 percent of people affected by disasters globally. Online scam economies generated an estimated US$1.03 trillion worldwide, with losses to victims across the region reaching as much as US$114.1 billion in 2025.

UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo said people often feel insecurity first through practical hardships, such as losing work, facing an unaffordable bill or being unable to rely on public services. When a climate disaster adds to those pressures, he said, families, institutions and national budgets can be pushed to breaking point. "Development is prevention," he said, describing prevention as a smart security investment.

Four systems can stop the cascade

The report calls for investment in trusted institutions and stronger local governance, social protection, AI and digital safeguards, public health protections, disaster preparedness and early warning systems. Community trust-building and resilience initiatives also matter: when people trust the institutions around them, they are more likely to seek help and take part in local responses.

Examples in the report show how these measures can reduce risk and strengthen people's sense of security. The circuit-breaker idea is meant to help countries spot and contain pressure early, before disruption in one part of society spills into another.

The economic case is substantial. UNDP estimates that every dollar spent on disaster resilience can save between four and seven dollars in response costs. Wider prevention investments could return up to US$103 for every dollar through avoided crises and recovery expenses.

Prevention needs a place in the budget

The report sets that case against a widening funding gap. Global military spending reached nearly US$2.9 trillion in 2025, while official development assistance fell by close to 23 percent to US$174.3 billion, the largest annual decline on record. UNDP warns that prevention, resilience and longer-term human development are losing resources just as interconnected risks are becoming more costly to manage.

Kanni Wignaraja, UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, said development and security have too often been treated as separate goals. The report calls for governments to connect the two in their planning and spending, making prevention more visible and fiscally viable.

Its argument is not that development should be turned into a security tool, or that necessary defence spending should stop. It calls for a broader view of security, one measured by whether people can live with dignity, access opportunities and feel confident about the future. In Wignaraja's words, trust is the force that helps connect security and development to outcomes people can feel.