Be Mains Ready

Approach:

• Briefly discuss the need for disaster resilient infrastructure.
• Discuss how it will augment economic growth and development
• Conclude suitably.

Introduction

• Natural hazards like floods, earthquakes, typhoons, and climate change—pose growing risks to development.
• When infrastructure fails during a natural disaster, it can interrupt vital services, also it deploys already scarce capital in disaster recovery and rehabilitation. Thus, there is a need to build Disaster resilient infrastructure.
• Resilient infrastructure refers to a system’s ability to anticipate, absorb, and recover from a hazardous event in a timely and efficient manner.
• Making infrastructure disaster-resilient encompasses structural and nonstructural measures.
  
  • Structural measures: Actions taken in the aftermath of disasters have major impacts on processes that follow for example flood control systems, protective embankments, seawall rehabilitation, and retrofitting of buildings.
  • Nonstructural measures refer to planning ahead for disasters and investing in resilience to reduce vulnerability to multiple hazards.

Body

• Disaster-Development Co-relation
  
  • Disasters set back development programming, destroying years of development initiatives.
  • Unplanned development programmes can increase an area’s susceptibility to disasters.
  • Disasters affect the vulnerable section of society the most. Thereby further adding to their miseries and delaying their development process.
• There is a strong need to integrate development and disaster strategies. Disaster risk reduction should become an integral part of the planning process.
• According to the UN office for disaster risk reduction every $1 invested in disaster resilient infrastructure can save up to $7 or more in response and recovery cost.
• However, making infrastructure resilient to natural disasters is a daunting challenge:
  
  • Because of the vast area of coverage that includes transport, electricity, water supply and sanitation, and buildings and other structures.
  • A huge fiscal cost will be required in making current infrastructure disaster resilient.
  • The government can explore the alternative mode of funding apart from public expenditure in disaster risk reduction.

Other steps that can be taken

• Disaster Impact Assessment must be made a mandatory part of Environment Impact Assessment.
• The government needs to develop a disaster atlas of India for better preparedness and mitigation measures.
• The government needs to provide insurance cover to people who are more vulnerable to disasters.
• Disaster management approach needs to be more decentralised at the level of Panchayati Raj institutions and local urban government, as suggested by the Sendai Framework and 14^th Finance Commission.

Conclusion

• It is age-old wisdom that prevention is better than cure, any investment towards disaster risk reduction will add to India's socio-economic development.