P K Mishra, Principal Secretary, PMO
India has significantly increased funding earmarked for disaster risk reduction and has brought about landmark changes in its financing architecture to support the entire spectrum of disaster risk management needs – disaster risk mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery and reconstruction
New Delhi:
India has told the UN General Assembly that it accords high importance to disaster risk reduction issues and is developing ambitious mitigation programmes to reduce the risk of losses from all hazards, including landslides, floods, earthquakes, heat waves and lightning.
Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, P K Mishra, said in his address to the Midterm Review of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) at a plenary in the UN General Assembly here on Thursday that in India disaster risk reduction is a ”central public policy issue”.
Mishra is leading the Indian delegation at the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Midterm Review of the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (HLM) that is taking place from May 18-19 at the United Nations Headquarters.
He said that under India’s current presidency of the G20, the group’s members have agreed to establish a ‘Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction’.
“The five priorities identified by the G20 Working Group – early warning for all, resilient infrastructure, improved financing of DRR, systems and capacities for response and ‘build back better’, and eco-system based approaches to DRR – will provide added impetus to the achievement of Sendai targets globally,” he said.
Mishra told the UNGA that India has significantly increased funding earmarked for disaster risk reduction and has brought about landmark changes in its financing architecture to support the entire spectrum of disaster risk management needs – disaster risk mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery and reconstruction.
India’s state and local governments have access to about USD 6 billion for disaster risk mitigation over five years (2021-2025). This is in addition to a resource of USD 23 billion meant for preparedness, response and recovery.
“In just over a decade, we have been able to reduce the loss of lives from cyclones to less than 2 per cent,” he said, adding that India is now developing ambitious mitigation programmes to reduce the risk of losses from all hazards – landslides, glacial lake outburst floods, earthquakes, forest fire, heat waves, and lightning.
The high-level meeting provides a platform for member states, the United Nations system partners and other stakeholders to reflect on the findings and recommendations of the Midterm Review, to examine context shifts and emerging issues since 2015.
It identifies course corrections and new initiatives to more effectively address the systemic nature of risk, and realise the outcomes and goals of the Sendai Framework, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement and other agreements, frameworks and conventions.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is a landmark 2015 agreement to reduce damage, losses and deaths from natural and man-made hazards by the end of the decade.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 (Sendai Framework) was the first major agreement of the post-2015 development agenda and provides member states with concrete actions to protect development gains from the risk of disaster.
Referring to the ‘Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure’, presently co-led by India and the United States, Mishra said the initiative is bringing about transformation in the way infrastructure systems are planned, designed, built, and maintained in the 21st century.
“Infrastructure projects are long-term investments. If informed by solid risk assessments, and underpinned by good risk governance, these infrastructure investments can build long-term resilience,” he added.
Mishra said India is also working assiduously to improve access to early warning and is implementing Common Alerting Protocol, which will integrate Alert Generating Agencies with Disaster Managers and Telecom Service Providers. “This will ensure dissemination of geo-targeted alerts in regional languages to reach, each one of 1.3 billion citizens of our country,” he said.
Applauding UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s initiative on ‘Early Warning for All by 2027’, Mishra said India’s efforts will contribute to achieving the target set by this timely global initiative.
The UNGA plenary heard from a survivor of the devastating earthquake in February in Turkiye that killed over 50,000 people.
Mishra said that in the spirit of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ which sees the world as one large inter-connected family, India extended immediate help to “our brothers and sisters from Turkiye and Syria by dispatching field hospitals and search and rescue teams as well as medical relief material.”
He described this as a “true testament to a human-centric global development approach.”
He underlined India’s commitment to join efforts to reduce disaster risks at home as well as everywhere on the planet in the spirit of the SDGs: “Leave no one behind, leave no place behind, and leave no ecosystem behind.” President of the 77th session of the General Assembly Csaba Korosi said eight years after the adoption of the Sendai Framework, global progress has not kept pace with the “urgency of our days” as the known number of people affected by disasters has jumped 80-fold since 2015.
”The shocks ignited by unattended risk – and amplified by Covid-19, conflict, and climate change – have torn through our systems across the world,” the top UN official said.
They have left millions homeless and starving, upended supply chains and laid bare the gross inequities of an international financial order that has often prized profits over people, the UN leader said.
“By engaging those most affected by disasters, we can reverse the trends towards inequality, restricted civic space and rising vulnerability.
In short: anticipate risks, calculate, factor in, prepare, prevent, respond rapidly and build the lessons learned into the next action plans,” Korosi said.
Role of states
He said states face complex challenges in disaster risk reduction.
States must evolve a financial architecture that can address the entire spectrum of disaster risk reduction needs in a balanced way. Because, for far too long they have focused almost entirely on financing disaster response, recovery and reconstruction, he said, according to an official statement.
Mishra highlighted the need for financial architecture and strong early warning systems while emphasising the role of states in tackling complex challenges.
He said the fact that both G7 and G20 have accorded priority to disaster risk reduction indicates that the issue is now getting attention at the highest level in the global policy discourse.
”Although the Sendai Framework as well as its predecessor, the Hyogo Framework, highlighted the importance of an all-of-society approach to disaster risk reduction, it is clear that states bear the primary responsibility for both stopping the creation of new disaster risks as well as reduction of existing disaster risks,” Mishra said.
While working on financing disaster risk mitigation and disaster preparedness, states must contend with complex challenges like how to increase the absorptive capacity to effectively utilise resources allocated for disaster risk mitigation.
”What kinds of institutional mechanisms, technical capacities and expertise do we need to develop for it? How are we going to measure outcomes? ”How do we balance risk mitigation financing for extensive risks (that is high frequency, moderate impact events) and intensive risks (that is low frequency, high impact events)? How do we target our assistance to the most vulnerable?” he asked.
These are complex challenges and countries with a long history of disaster risk mitigation financing are also grappling with them, Mishra said and called for collaboration and learning from each other.
The G20 Working Group will meet for the second time next week and they will devote a full day to discuss the issues of financing, Mishra said.
”I would like to talk about the role of the State in strengthening early warning systems. The notion of public-private partnership has been discussed for a long time in this context,” he said.
Noting that private players have entered the field for strengthening early warning systems and it is likely to get even more crowded as more sector-specific early warning services are developed, he asked what is the absolutely non-negotiable role of the state and can it outsource the observational network to private players, he explained
”To what extent should the State get involved in developing and deploying communication technologies? Should the State mandate private players to compulsorily provide essential early warning services in times of disasters,” he further asked.
Mishra said these challenges must be contended with if a transformational change in the way disaster risk reduction is pursued has to be brought about. It will also help the state become more effective in our climate change adaptation efforts, he said and thanked the Government of Japan for taking the initiative to curate this event and to invite India to be a partner in this effort.