Asia–Pacific region is one of the most dynamic regions in the world. During the latest three decades, the economic progress of nations in this region has been remarkable, which is characterized by rapid growth in economic prosperity, especially East Asia countries. However, the current huge amount and unsustainable energy consumption as well as rapid increase in carbon emission and pollutant emission in Asia–Pacific region has already constrained the continuous development of some nations. Furthermore, global climate change also begun to threaten the prospect of prosperity in East Asia countries and other emerging nations. The characteristics of geography, population density, distribution of industry and natural resource make this region one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change and related natural hazards. Researches on development economics, energy economics as well as economics of climate change and natural hazards covering Asia–Pacific region—such as assessment of climate change and natural hazard impacts, evaluation of adaptation and mitigation strategies and policies, modeling energy conservation and carbon emission reduction scenarios, and analyzing the relationship among economic growth, energy and resources consumption, carbon and pollutants emissions, national welfare and social progress—are very important and obviously useful in climate change adaptation and mitigation planning. Therefore, this special issue aims to promote and publish researches on economics of climate change and risk of disasters in Asia–Pacific region and around the world for a better understanding of existing knowledge and research gaps.

In this special issue, we collected 23 contributions which showed variety of research topics of interest in economics of climate change and risk of disasters in Asia–Pacific region.

I. Noy provided a new measurements of impacts of natural disasters in the Pacific Island Countries. In this paper, the burden of disasters on these countries was tabulated and measured in three steps. Firstly, the data found in the two global public datasets on disaster impacts were aggregated and compared. Secondly, a new index that aggregates disparate disaster impacts was developed and calculated for each Pacific Island Country. Thirdly, the burden of disasters on the Pacific Island Countries was compared with that on the Caribbean Island Countries. The results of this paper showed that the most commonly used dataset, EMDAT, greatly underestimates the burden of disasters on the Pacific Islands, and the burden of disasters is significantly more acute in the Pacific.

J. A. Lassa, A. Y. H. Lai and T. Goh contributed a research on an observation and projection of impacts of climate extremes on food production in ASEAN. They pointed out that, since climate hazards may differ across geographical regions, the impact of climate extremes on food production will affect marginal farmers, fishers and poor urban consumers disproportionately, as they have limited capacities to adapt to and recover from extreme weather events. However, there was still limited study on this subject matter. This paper presented some findings from research on observed and projected loss and damage inflicted by climate extremes on agricultural crops in Southeast Asia.

X. Jiang, N. Mori, H. Tatano, L. Yang and Y. Shibutani provided an estimation of property loss and business interruption loss under scenarios of storm surge inundation to explore the economic impact of climate change on Ise Bay of Japan, in which the scenarios-based analyses were conducted with respect to Typhoon Vera, which caused the most severe storm surge in the recorded history of Japan in 1959. By comparing the property loss and business interruption loss caused by different hazard scenarios, the effect of different seawalls was evaluated and the economic impact of future climate change was estimated in this paper. Their results indicated that although the current seawall would considerably reduce the scale of losses, climate change would cause Ise Bay to experience more serious storm surge inundation, and result in a significant increase in economic losses owing to a combination of climate change and the worst track scenario.

C. J. Yang and H. Huang contributed a paper named Map** Tropical Forest Vegetation from LANDSAT TM images Based on Fusion of Knowledge and Geo-data. In this paper, a rule-based model to identify different forest types in **, which can effectively integrate multi-knowledge and multi-resource data to identify the tropical forest vegetation types with higher accuracy.

X. H. Yang, B. Y. Sun, J. Zhang, M. S. Li, J. He, Y. M. Wei and Y. Q. Li provided a hierarchy evaluation of water resources vulnerability to climate change in Bei**g of China. In this paper, a multi-functional hierarchy indicator system for the performance evaluation of water resources vulnerability (WRV) under climate change was developed, and an evaluation model named analytic hierarchy process combining set pair analysis (AHPSPA) model was established for assessing WRV. This model was used to assess water resource vulnerability in Bei**g with 26 indexes under eight kinds of future climate change scenarios. Their results showed that the WRV of Bei**g was in the middle vulnerability and water resources change and water use level factors played more important role in the evaluation system of water resource vulnerability in Bei**g.

X. Yu discussed the central–local conflicts in China’s environmental policy implementation. She pointed out in this paper that like many other environmental policies, forestry policy has not been effectively implemented in China, mainly due to the fragmentation nature in China’s environmental governance institution. With insufficient motivation, local governments tend to minimize their efforts in planning, monitoring and supporting reforestation activities, which poses great challenges to the sustainability of the reforestation benefits. This paper raised three innovative strategies to solve the financial dilemma that leads to the effort minimization phenomenon, with both the advantages and disadvantages for each strategy critically discussed. This paper also recommended ways by which the central government could improve design of reforestation policies, or other large-scale ecological programs, which involve local governments as a key liaison.

J. Hou, J. Lv, X. Chen and S. Yu provided an evaluation and spatial characteristics analysis of China’s regional social vulnerability to geological disasters. In this paper, the social vulnerability index of geological disasters was calculated through a super-efficiency data envelopment analysis model. In addition, the global and local autocorrelation tests for social vulnerability to geological disasters in each province in China were carried out which indicated the characteristics of its spatial distribution pattern. The results showed that China’s social vulnerability to geological disasters is relatively high; the social vulnerability index of geological disasters in China is directly related to the regional exposure degree and reaction and recovery ability and among which the reaction and recovery ability has great effects on the social vulnerability index.

B. Tang, Y. Hu, H. Li, D. Yang and J. Liu provided an estimation of comprehensive carrying capacity of Bei**g–Tian**–Hebei region of China. In this paper, based on a state-space method and a component analysis, a comprehensive evaluation system of carrying capacity was established for the Bei**g–Tian**–Hebei region from four aspects: economy, environment, ecology and energy. Their evaluation results showed that the comprehensive carrying capacity in this region gradually rose in recent years and the economic carrying capacity played an important role. Ecological and environmental carrying capacity gradually enhanced but was still affected by water shortages. The energy carrying capacity was low restricting the sustainable development of this region.

P. Gong, B. Tang, Y. ** them to understand the status and complexity of climate change and risk of disasters in Asia–Pacific region from the economics perspectives.

In closing, we thank the anonymous referees for their efforts during the review process. We gratefully acknowledge Professor Tad S. Murty, Editor of Natural Hazards, Petra van Steenbergen, Executive Editor of Springer, Stefan van Dijl, Editor of Springer, and Fazil Rafiq, Journals Editorial Office Assistant, for supporting the special issue and offering their expert guidance and efforts to make this issue published.

We acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 71471018, 71521002, 71673026, the Social Science Foundation of Bei**g under Grant No. 16JDGLB013, and the National Key R&D Program under Grant No. 2016YFA0602603.