Bengal plans to go for disaster risk reduction strategy

The West Bengal government plans to incorporate area-specific approaches to identify, assess and reduce risks of disasters as part of its disaster management strategy, an official said here Saturday.

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) is a systematic approach to identifying, assessing and reducing the risks of disaster.

It aims to reduce socio-economic vulnerabilities to disaster as well as dealing with the environmental and other hazards that trigger them.

According to Amit Chaudhuri, joint secretary in the department of planning in Bengal, there will be a series of workshops early next year with stakeholders such as the disaster management authority, scientists and NGOs to churn out a methodology.

"We want guidelines to identify the risks at the source and form a model to help reduce those factors.

"It will be done in a way such that people starting from cities to those living at the panchayat level can be integrated into the strategies," Chaudhuri said on the sidelines of a workshop organised by Jadavpur University's School of Oceanographic Sciences.

He suggested the inclusion of DRR as part of the "Deltas, Vulnerability and Climate Change: Migration and Adaptation" project where experts from Britain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana and India will investigate regions, including the delta of the Nile in Egypt and the Ganga-Brahmaputra in Bangladesh and India.

"It should be holistic and include issues like poverty alleviation, health etc.," he said.

The School of Oceanographic Sciences is leading the project in India.