Disaster resilience at centre stage of global, national development discourse: P K Mishra

New Delhi, April 4 (PTI) Disaster resilience has come to the centre stage of the global and national development discourse, P K Mishra, the principal secretary to the prime minister, said on Tuesday, pushing for focus on affordability, scalability and sustainability for emerging economies.

Addressing the International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI) 2023, Mishra said focus must be as much on institutional innovation as on technological innovation, official sources quoting him said.

“If the future is uncertain, then we cannot lock ourselves into only one way of doing things,” he said.

By focussing on modernising our institutions, maintaining optionality, creating multi-disciplinary capacities, what works for emerging economies, and putting people at the centre, pathways for resilient infrastructure for our future generations can be developed, he said.

The theme for this year’s ICDRI is ‘Delivering Resilient and Inclusive Infrastructure: Pathways for Risk-Informed Systems, Practices and Investments’.

Mishra said, “Disaster resilience is no longer a niche subject. It has come to the centre stage of the global and national development discourse.”

Underlining the interconnectedness of infrastructure systems and the need for speed in providing to unserved and underserved communities, he said the natural progression of this discourse would be to go beyond describing the problem to finding solutions.

He highlighted five themes that should underpin the search for solutions.

In this regard, he advocated imbibing systemic thinking by institutions and shedding institutional approaches of the 20th century to solve the problems of the 21st century, and cited the ‘PM GatiShakti Masterplan’ as an example of holistic and integrated planning of projects.

He stressed on the importance of optionality in infrastructure systems and the need for an iterative approach, and also emphasised the need for modernising institutions and being nimble footed.

This, he said, would require the type of capacities that the world both in the south and in the north presently lacks, he said.

Fourth, Mishra said, “While we want to facilitate north-south, south-south, north-north exchange, a large part of the infrastructure services will have to be delivered in the south. Therefore, in our search for solutions we must focus on affordability, scalability and sustainability for emerging economies.”

And finally, he stressed the need to measure outcomes in terms of reliable infrastructure services to people as opposed to only in terms of creation of hard assets, official sources added.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his video address underlined the need for an integrated response to disasters, saying disaster in one region can have a big impact on a completely different region in a closely connected world.