During his speech at the UN Climate Action Summit 2019 in New York on Monday, Modi announced that India was presenting a practical approach and roadmap to make infrastructure resilient to disasters by launching a Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) and invited all member states of the UN to join the grouping.
Modi first mooted CDRI as an idea in November 2016, while inaugurating an Asian ministerial conference on disaster risk reduction.
CDRI, in its formative years, plans to focus on developing resilience in ecological infrastructure, social infrastructure with a concerted emphasis on health and education, and economic infrastructure with special attention to transportation, telecommunications, energy and water.
Within two to three years, the coalition aims to have a three-fold impact, achieving considerable changes in member countries’ policy framework, future infrastructure investment and high reduction in economic losses from climate-related events and natural disasters across sectors.
The CDRI can emerge as a platform for generating and exchanging knowledge and providing member countries technical support, training and advocacy in building resilient infrastructure systems
The idea is to look at how the present infrastructure in countries where natural or man-made disasters have an impact, is equipped to face current as well as future risks.
Similarly, to develop standards that can meet these challenges and train people to design and build infrastructure such as rail, roads, airports or bridges that would have a reduced impact in the wake of a calamity.