Financing India’s disaster risk resilience strategy
In this paper, we try to cover a whole range of polices and schemes that have been undertaken in India to finance disaster risk resilience (DRR). This paper tries to emphasise the importance of DRR in dealing with natural catastrophes by integrating DRR and climate change adaptation strategies for the purpose of mainstreaming them into centrally sponsored schemes. It briefly talks about synergising risk reduction efforts with sustainable development goals through the Sendai Framework. This framework calls for all-inclusive collective action from private stakeholders and local governments, while unambiguously stating the primary role of a state. The paper reflects briefly on the gaps since the advent of these policies and suggests methods for financing based on experiences of other countries. Then the focus of the paper shifts towards insurance and reinsurance mechanisms used in other countries for financing these catastrophes. It underlines a concept that resilience can be attained only through building better infrastructure for reducing shocks and these instruments can be financed by introducing new financial tools which deal with climate change from its very inception. Infrastructure creation is an ineluctable component of economic growth and development. It points out that the success of any economy is heavily dependent on its infrastructure network and assets – existing and planned – and ignoring the ‘resilience’ aspect in infrastructure management and investment would mean additional vulnerabilities and serious negative impacts on efforts towards sustainable development and a low carbon future.
