Bangladesh and Orissa are two places that have learned disaster management the hard way after deadly cyclones in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and have left behind a huge number of deaths and property damages that have led to cyclones. On the rim of the prone were the regular features of life. Bay of Bengal. It was a combination of construction – of sturdy rescue shelters that in normal times doubled as schools and community centers, of roads that could withstand flooding – and governance, early warning systems, awareness programs and armies of civilian volunteers. The training of those who know what to do in case of disaster, that works for these places.
Knowledge about what to do is not in short supply. The United Nations’ Sendai Framework for Resilient Infrastructure, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, with which India leads the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, and the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction, but what To be, there are three sources of ready reference on this done. However, knowing is not the same as doing. The rats knew they had to ring the bell to the cat. But the question remained, who would ring the bell to the cat? In terms of disaster resistance, the key ingredient, the glue that holds everything else together, is sound governance.
You might also like
A strong India apart from emerging peers
How Jiten Doshi of Inam AMC chose the shares
How Russia’s gas line to the EU affects India
Flexible work is no magic bullet for women’s income
The risk of a disaster, location and time-specific, must be fully understood. Disaster risk governance should be strengthened for risk management. Public and private investment must be mobilized to invest in resilience. The state and society must be prepared for disasters, to avoid them and prepare itself for reconstruction and rehabilitation.
This is further broken down into action points:
Five recommendations to overcome five barriers to resilient infrastructure
1: Get the Basics Right
1.1: Introducing and implementing regulations, building codes and procurement rules
1.2: Build systems for operation, maintenance and post-incident response to appropriate infrastructure
1.3 : Provide appropriate funding and financing for infrastructure planning, construction and maintenance
2: Building Institutions for Resilience
2.1: Implement a holistic government approach to resilient infrastructure, building on existing regulatory systems
2.2: Identify critical infrastructure and define acceptable and intolerable risk levels
2.3: Ensure equitable access to resilient infrastructure
3: Create rules and incentives for resilience
3.1: Consider flexibility objectives in master plans, standards and regulations and regularly adjust them to climate change
3.2: Creating an economic incentive for service providers to offer flexible infrastructure assets and services
3.3: Ensure that infrastructure regulations conform to risk-informed land use plans and guide development towards safer areas
4: Improve decision making
4.1: Invest in freely accessible natural hazards and climate change data
4.2: Make strong decisions and reduce the likelihood of regret and catastrophic failures
4.3: Build the skills needed to use data and models and gather information about the private sector
5: Provide Financing
5.1: Providing sufficient funding to incorporate risk assessment into the master plan and initial project design
5.2: Develop a government-wide financial security strategy and contingency plans
5.3: Promote transparency to better inform investors and decision makers
(Source: World Bank Group, Lifelines: The Resilient Infrastructure Opportunity)
In the same report there is a very illuminating chart, which shows the rising curve obtained by plotting built-up utility against expenditure and another curve, with a steeper slope above it, showing when With how much does the reliability of a built-up utility cost (https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/31805/211430ov.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y page 15,
Examples from other parts of the world are: the Japanese developed and implemented stronger building codes to make buildings earthquake resilient, by improving the code, investing in the ability to comply with the code and replacing building permits with confirmed, business involving private parties. Inspection and standards confirmation. For such a system to work, the challenge is not so much the ethics in the society as it is to deviate from the norm of governance and functional institutions.
As climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent, resilience must be built into infrastructure, policy, law and regulation, decision-making, accounting, insurance and public awareness. India, like other countries, should identify its climate-change vulnerable regions, cities and states and without wasting time work to establish resilience systems.
Elsewhere in Minto
In Rai, Kaushik Basu writes on US Fed’s error misreading the labor market, Montek S. Ahluwalia and Utkarsh Patel say India needs 10 year plan On strategy for managing climate change. Biju Dominic on how employers can persuade employees back office, tells a long story Existential crisis of a major PSU,
catch all business News, market news, today’s fresh news events and breaking news Updates on Live Mint. download mint news app To get daily market updates.