International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure

In News: The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) is hosting the International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure – ICDRI 2021.

• The EU has also recently joined India-led Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.

Key Highlights of the Speech

• Once-in-a-hundred-year disaster: COVID-19 pandemic in an interdependent and interconnected world has spared no country (rich or poor, east or west, north or south).
• Innovations: Innovations to address global challenges can come from anywhere.
  • Hence there is a need for fostering a global ecosystem that supports innovation in all parts of the world.
  • The year 2021 promises to be a year of swift recovery from the pandemic.
• Climate change is another global pandemic: It will take sustained and concerted efforts to mitigate climate change.
• Need for Climate Resilient Infrastructure: Countries that are making large investments in infrastructure, eg India, must invest in resilience, and not in risk.
  • Many infrastructure systems- digital infrastructure, shipping lines, aviation networks- cover the entire world and the effect of disaster in one part of the world can quickly spread across the world.
  • Cooperation is a must for ensuring the resilience of the global system.

• High Expectations from COP-26: The world is at the midpoint of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris agreement, and the Sendai Framework.
  • The COP-26 will be hosted by the UK and Italy later this year (2021).
  • This partnership on resilient infrastructure must play an important role in helping meet some of those expectations.
• Few Key Priority Areas:
  • Concerns of the most vulnerable nations and communities should be placed first by CDRI to fulfil the central promise of the SDGs, i.e, “Leave no one behind”.
  • Resiliency in Health infrastructure and the Digital infrastructure should be ensured after detailed analysis.
  • Resiliency in all the Technology: The quest for resilience should not differentiate between technologies as too basic or too advanced.
    • The CDRI must maximize the demonstration effect of the application of technology.
  • Mass Movement: The notion of “resilient infrastructure” must become a mass movement galvanizing the energies of everyone including experts, and formal institutions.

Source: Business Line