In just four days in February, 200 avalanches hit the mountain regions of Tajikistan, sweeping away houses, rendering critical roads impassable, and killing 19 people.

These kinds of disasters are nothing new to Central Asia. Over the past two decades, the region lost over $1.5 billion to natural disasters, affecting over 2.5 million people. A major flood—say, one with a one percent probability of occurring annually—could cause devastating losses: from $220 million in the Kyrgyz Republic to $2.3 billion in Kazakhstan. A major earthquake can cause financial losses from over $360 million in Turkmenistan to over $10 billion in Uzbekistan. With climate change, natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe than probabilities might suggest.