Resilience needs to be decided at the project design stage to ensure that investments are protected and communities remain safe, the secretary said.
At a time when the scale and nature of disaster risks are undergoing a fundamental shift, disaster resilience needs to be embedded in infrastructure projects at the project design stage itself and not necessarily only after the disaster, Economic Affairs Secretary Anuradha Thakur said on Wednesday.
Resilience needs to be treated not just as an afterthought but as a guiding principle for planning, procurement, financing and execution of an infrastructure project, she said.
“Over the past five decades, the number of disasters globally has increased nearly fivefold and annual losses to infrastructure… now run into hundreds of billions of dollars. For finance ministries and policymakers across the globe, it’s not just an environmental concern, it is fundamentally a development and a fiscal challenge. Every damaged road, disrupted power system, flooded urban network translates into lost growth, strained budgets and setbacks to livelihoods. The question, therefore, before us is no longer whether and on what scale the disaster would happen but whether our infrastructure is ready going forward or not,” the secretary said.
Thakur was speaking at an event organised by Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), a global coalition linked to building infrastructure resilience against climate and disaster risks with 53 member countries and 12 partner organisations.
Resilience needs to be decided at the project design stage to ensure that investments are protected and communities remain safe, the secretary said.
Highlighting three messages, Thakur said, resilience makes economic sense as investing upfront to strengthen infrastructure reduces long-term costs, avoids disruptions, and safeguards public finances.
“It is not merely a safeguard, in fact, it is a productivity enhancing investment,” she said. Second, she said, resilience needs to be mainstreamed and not marginalised, it should be built into appraisal guidelines, procurement processes and financing structures.
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“This would require institutional alignment across ministries, sectors and implementing agencies,” she added. Third, partnerships are essential as no single country or institution can address this challenge alone, she said.
“Platforms such as CDRI play a critical role in knowledge sharing, standard setting, capacity building, especially for developing countries that face the highest risk with the least resources,” she said.
Inclusion of proactive disaster risk financing frameworks in public finance practices is crucial as these frameworks are vital to safeguard national budgets, protection of economic stability, and important for ensuring sustainable growth, she added.
The CDRI launched its report, Mainstreaming Disaster Resilience into Infrastructure Projects in India, that said that climate and disaster risks pose significant fiscal threats, with global infrastructure losses estimated at $845 billion annually and actual losses far higher.
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“India’s $4.51 trillion infrastructure investment target by 2030, and its ambition to become a $30 trillion economy by 2047, depend on embedding resilience into infrastructure systems…roads, railways, and power sectors are highly exposed to disaster risks,” the CDRI release said.
The report calls for embedding resilience clauses in contracts, integrating disaster risk assessments across the project lifecycle, strengthening hazard data systems, building institutional capacity, and the creation of innovative financing mechanisms.
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