“CDRI Promotes Resilient Infrastructure to Withstand Climate and Disaster Risks”

Sandeep Poundrik is the Director-General, Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI). Here, he is in an exclusive email conversation with Abhas Mukherjee for TerraGreen.

- Abhas Mukherjee

Please tell us about the concept of the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI). Who proposed the idea of the need of this organization and what are its objectives?

Infrastructure systems are key drivers of economic growth. But they are regularly exposed to climate change events and natural hazards. Moreover, with the increasing population and its demands, the existing infrastructure is expected to be placed under additional stress with new infrastructure to be built in hazardous areas.

To reduce the loss of life and property, there is a grave need to address the challenges of building resilience into new and existing infrastructure systems. Aligning the need to build resilient systems, the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, launched the Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) at the UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September, 2019.

Today, CDRI has grown to a global partnership of 29 members which includes national governments, UN agencies and programmes, multilateral development banks and financing mechanisms and the private sector.

Its objective is to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems prone to climate and disaster risks, thereby ensuring sustainable development. CDRI functions as a multi-stakeholder platform to generate and exchange knowledge and resources from members on different aspects of disaster resilience of infrastructure, thus contributing to each other’s economic growth.