Warning that climate extremes are likely to emerge as a major challenge, Home Minister Rajnath Singh today urged anti-disaster experts from around the world to come together and create a resilient infrastructure for the future.
He said infrastructure systems, by definition, are built for the longer term to serve many generations. And the way these infrastructures are built today, they will either build risk or resilience for future generations, Singh said.
"Climate-related extremes are likely to become more intense and frequent. Past is no longer a good guide for the future," Singh said, as he inaugurated the International Workshop on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (IWDRI) here.
The two-day workshop is organised by the National Disaster Management Authority in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
During his address, the home minister also cited the effects of climate change in India.
"In our own country, we are observing that floods are taking place in areas that are traditionally not known to be flood-prone. There are parts of the country that are experiencing heavy rainfall and floods in spite of the fact that overall seasonal rainfall is below the normal," he said.
These changes, Singh said, will pose new challenges to how "we design our infrastructure for the future".
"Both the developed and the developing countries are in the same boat. The challenge of building disaster resilient infrastructure is such that no country can address it alone," he said.
He said this was a common challenge where "countries from the south and the north, small island countries and the land- locked countries, small and large economies, countries with century-old infrastructure systems and countries at a nascent stage of infrastructure development need to come together and devise strategies for securing our common future."
This promise will be fully realised only if everyone is able to link their capabilities to social and economic realities, the home minister said.
Singh said it was his government's priority to ensure that a disaster resilient infrastructure is created for coming times, as also underlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address last year, when India hosted the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR).
During that conference, the home minister said, Modi had outlined a 10-point agenda to give a sense of urgency to implement the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction.
"His (PM's) first point emphasised the need for investing in infrastructure in a manner so that it can withstand hazards not only now but also in the future," he said.
He said it's now widely recognised that in coming decades robust infrastructure will form the core of sustainable development.
This, he said, was recognised in the way the sustainable development goals have been framed. "We need to bring to bear tremendous foresight and rigour to ensure that all new infrastructure is built to withstand the hazards of the present - and the future."
"Our generation shoulders enormous responsibility for getting this right," Singh said.
He said there were several expressions to describe the future infrastructure growth across the world.
Like, he said, the infrastructure that "we will build in the next 20 years will be more than what we built over the last two thousand years!"
And at the global level, by 2040, to adequately meet the infrastructure needs of humanity, we will need nearly USD 100 trillion, he added.
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