Team Blitz India
NEW DELHI: Climate change and disasters account for $300 billion loss annually in the principal infrastructure sectors, according to a biennial report from the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI).
The CDRI, launched by Prime Minister NarendraModi at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September 2019, is an international partnership of countries, organisations and stakeholders that focuses on promoting and enhancing the resilience of infrastructure systems to disasters, particularly those related to climate change.
The inclusion of health and education infrastructure, and building stock, increases that range to $732 to $845 billion — around one-seventh of the global GDP growth in the financial year 2021-2022 — with nearly half of this contingent liability held by the low-and-middle-income countries, the CDRI report said.
As a result of this, the low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), therefore, face a multi-dimensional challenge. These are a large infrastructure deficit that constrains social and economic development,
The precarious and poor-quality infrastructure due to deficiencies in infrastructure governance, disaster-related asset loss and damage and service disruption, are not suited to address the challenges posed by climate change and rapid technological change, the CDRI report said.
“Extreme climate hazards magnify disaster risk, asset loss and service disruption, while existing infrastructure may lose its functionality. Although growing momentum in climate change mitigation is changing the way infrastructure systems are developed and used with a transition to carbon-neutral and carbon-negative development gaining pace in sectors such as energy and transport, the climate change-conditioned global average annual loss (AAL) in infrastructure currently lies between $300,” the report said.
