New infrastructure to be created anywhere should be resilient to disaster: India

India today said it is ready to work with other nations and stake-holders and share best practices to build partnerships and collaborate in the domain of resilient infrastructure to reduce disaster risk.

Presenting the country statement at the Asian Ministerial Conference of Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) being held here, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said India has adopted the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction and it outlined a 10-point agenda to provide a practical roadmap for its implementation in the country and the region.

The Sendai Framework is a 15-year, voluntary, non-binding agreement which recognizes that the State has the primary role to reduce disaster risk but that responsibility should be shared with other stakeholders including local government, the private sector and other stakeholders.

Rijiju highlighted the urgent need to ensure that the new infrastructure to be created anywhere should be resilient to disaster.

"As our earnest endeavour, India will work along with other nations and stake-holders to build partnerships and collaborate in the domain of resilient infrastructure," he said.

The minister outlined that India believes in working together with other nations in disaster risk reduction as there are common challenges, benefits of sharing best practices and a need to respond together for search and rescue.

Towards this end, India had organised a joint exercise of SAARC (the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) nations in 2015, BIMSTEC (the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) nations in 2017 and for SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) nations will organise another exercise in 2019, he said.

Rijiju shared the successful Indian experience in reducing the disaster mortality due to heat wave from over 2,000 in a year to less than 200.

He also shared important flagship disaster risk reduction schemes such as school safety programme in areas falling in seismic Zone IV and V and the national cyclone risk mitigation project in coastal states to reduce vulnerability of coastal communities to cyclones.

Drawing on the experience, India will soon be launching a comprehensive project on similar lines to address risks due to earthquakes, Rijiju said.