India’s Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure annual meet to scale up potential solutions for resilient world

The theme of the conference is Delivering Resilient and Inclusive Infrastructure: Pathways for Risk-Informed Systems, Practices and Investments.

The two-day hybrid conference seeks to emphasize the need to integrate resilience in infrastructure, ensure access, delivery, and continuity of essential services to people and communities in the face of increasing exposure and impact of disasters and extreme climatic events.

ICDRI 2023 aims to convene Member countries, private sector, organizations, institutions, infrastructure actors, and stakeholders to strengthen the global discourse on disaster and climate-resilient infrastructure. The focus of the conference will be on exploring, sharing, and identifying actionable solutions and actions for mainstreaming resilience principles into sector-wide policies, processes, and practices across different stakeholder groups.

Amit Prothi, Director General, Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) remarked on Thursday, “ICDRI is our annual flagship event and will see a gathering of over 90 global experts from more than 20 countries representing 50 global organizations, private sector, and academia. The fifth edition of ICDRI will focus on helping scale up potential solutions for a more resilient world and facilitating disaster and climate adaptation objectives”

Kamal Kishore, Member Secretary, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and India Co-chair of CDRI’s Executive Committee shared, “I am excited about ICDRI for three reasons. Firstly, we have significant conversations, with many more stakeholders coming on board, specially from the private sector and academia, secondly, we are moving from understanding problems to identifying solutions, and thirdly, ICDRI gives us an opportunity to showcase early results of CDRI’s work on ground.”

Veena Reddy, Mission Director, USAID/India and U.S. Co-Chair of CDRI’s Executive Committee said, “The vital infrastructure that the world’s population relies on for their health, energy, travel, communications, and well-being is highly vulnerable to natural hazards and climate change. Engaging the global community is the only way we will tackle this intensifying problem. It is our hope that ICDRI 2023 will not only raise awareness of the challenges we face, but inspire action to catalyze safe, inclusive, and disaster-resilient infrastructure around the world.”David Puig, Ambassador, Embassy of the Dominican Republic in the Republic of India said, “CDRI’s work is extremely relevant for Small Island Development States (SIDS). Although these countries contribute the least to climate change, they are most at risk from rising sea levels. ICDRI 2023 will be an opportunity for a dialogue between several countries and learn from their challenges. CDRI has so far received 50 expressions of interest from 28 island countries and aims to fund 10-12 of these countries by the 3rd quarter of 2023.”

Franck Viault, Head of Cooperation, Delegation of the European Union to India and Bhutan said, “The recent earthquake in Turkiye and Syria, and the one we experienced in New Delhi a few days earlier show the importance to have disaster resilient infrastructure. Since prevention is always better, CDRI’s work is key to avoiding problems in private and public infrastructure. At ICDRI our focus will be to seek synergies with key EU Global Gateway initiative and EU tools for promoting resilient infrastructure globally. EU has committed € 5 million to Infrastructure for Resilient Island States (IRIS).”