Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi announced a global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), at the UN Climate Action Summit 2019 held in the USA, in September 2019. This partnership of national governments, UN agencies and programmes, multilateral development banks, financing mechanisms, private sector, and knowledge institutions will promote the resilience of new and existing infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks, thereby ensuring sustainable development.

Ambitions Of Cdri

1. Developed through consultations with more than 35 countries, CDRI envisions enabling a measurable reduction in infrastructure losses from disasters, including extreme climate events.
2. Established as a platform for generating and exchanging knowledge, CDRI will conduct country-specific and global activities. CDRI will provide member countries technical support and capacity development, research and knowledge management, and advocacy and partnerships to facilitate and encourage investment in disaster resilient infrastructure systems.
3. CDRI focuses 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.

Coalition For Disaster Resilience Infrastructure(Cdri) And Sendai Framework

1. Infrastructure systems are critical to enabling the transformation necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and it is critical that they are risk-informed and resilient, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.
2. In the face of increasing levels of systemic disaster risk, including in the context of climate change, CDRI addresses the challenge of building resilience into infrastructure systems.
3. By providing access to good practices to develop appropriate standards and regulatory mechanisms to manage infrastructure development in a manner that fosters resilience, the CDRI enables national level systemic resilience with implications for globally interconnected systems.
4. The CDRI supports countries to upgrade their systems to ensure disaster and climate resilience of existing and future infrastructure, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and the Sendai Framework.
5. In line with the Sendai Framework and its core provisions, CDRI will support efforts to build back better from COVID-19 impacts towards the attainment of the 2030 Agenda.
6. The Sendai Framework recommends strengthening disaster resilient public and private investments through structural, nonstructural, and functional disaster risk prevention and reduction measures in critical facilities.
7. CDRI encourages the revision of existing or the development of new building codes, standards, and rehabilitation and reconstruction practices at the national or local levels.
8. CDRI calls for the promotion of proper design and construction, including the use of the principles of universal design and the standardization of building materials; retrofitting and rebuilding; and nurturing a culture of maintenance.

Coalition For Disaster Resilience Infrastructure And Paris Climate Change Goals

1. Climate-related extreme events are increasing globally, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further reinforced the need for robust disaster preparedness and investment in renewable energy, green infrastructure, energy and resource efficiency, large-scale retrofitting, renovation projects, and the circular economy.
2. The CDRI is a welcome initiative to help tackle these objectives in a multilateral approach, which will help in the implementation of the Paris Agreement, through both global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and enhanced climate change adaptation action.
3. CDRI is aimed towards achieving the adaptation goal. CDRI forms the basis of India’s vision for global climate action that also takes into account issues of equity, development, and the special needs of developing and least developed countries.

CDRI, thus, aims to enable the achievement of objectives of expanding universal access to basic services and enabling prosperity as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals, while also working at the intersection of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Climate Agreement.