The recent natural disasters, particularly in Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir, are tragic examples that emphasise the critical importance of maintaining a balance between growth and a healthy environment
Recent months have witnessed a flurry of high-profile engagements between India and countries across the world, bringing in its wake knowledge-transfer and investment. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India infused fresh hopes and fervor in foreign relations. China’s proposed investment worth $20 billion in infrastructure and manufacturing is sure to spur the sectors into an overdrive of development. Similarly, the successful visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US has taken India-US ties to a different level.
In a survey conducted by the US India Business Council, post Mr Modi’s visit, found that $42 billion was willing to be committed over the next two to three years for investment by just 20 per cent of the members surveyed. As a confident investor community, worldwide, joins hands with Mr Modi in transforming India, ‘acche din’ for the Indian economy seem to have begun.
In a world that is putting economy before ecology, it is equally crucial to usher in ‘good times’ for the environment. The recent spate of natural disasters particularly in Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir are tragic examples that emphasise the critical importance of maintaining a balance between growth and healthy environment.
These disasters are capable of reducing years of economic growth to a state of total ruin within a matter of hours, besides making people vulnerable to the fury of nature. The Government needs to give topmost priority towards strengthening the climate resilience initiative in order to overcome this. A sound climate strategy can aim at fortifying the capacity of the socio-ecological system to absorb stress and maintaining function in the face of extreme climate change. The Government must strive to go a step further and ensure that the strategy is effective enough to adapt, reorganise, and evolve the socio-economic system in order to make it more sustainable and efficient.
The Government has generated enormous goodwill and a positive atmosphere, both at home and abroad, thanks to a stable leadership and Mr Modi’s formidable track record as Chief Minister earlier in the form of the Gujarat model.
This can help forge collaboration with frontline international organisations to draw up the required strategy that specifies how India can focus on inter-relationships between resiliency, sustainability and climate issues. This will help India to be confident of a future where the population faces the prospect of a two-degree Celsius temperature increase, besides many other climatic exigencies.
The World Bank commitment of a $90 million loan to the Sri lanka Climate Resilience Programme to increase its risk resilience, is an excellent example from which India can draw inspiration and strive to attain the same. The programme is a four-year project that aims to address the issue of climate change by building resilience of vulnerable population to adapt and improve the Government’s capacity to disaster response.
According to the World Bank estimates, Sri lanka suffered floods in 2010-2011 that caused damage of a billion dollars in the country. Every year, Sri lanka risks $380 million a year in damages from natural disasters, with various parts of the country facing recurrent drought which has resulted in 40 per cent crop losses in the affected areas.
The World Bank funding, intellectual input and expertise will help Sri lanka increase its climate risk resilience of infrastructure in the areas of-flood and drought management, transport continuity and school protection.
Besides this, a further $13 million will be pumped in for nine river basins to develop flood-and-drought protection methods. This initiative is helping the island nation to formulate the strategy to balance economic growth and activity amid extreme weather conditions and climate hazards besides minimising the effect of environmental disasters.
India needs to evolve a strategy which will back the agenda that drives the initiative development of climate resilience.
The series of ecological calamities that have taken place lately, have tested people’s endurance and in the process put an enormous burden on the socio-economic system. To prevent a complete breakdown of the same, the Government must intervene and seek to revitalise the system.
In this process, global cooperation is hugely critical. But India, with its stand of not cutting emissions, besides having plans to continue to boost its fossil fuel use in order to provide affordable electricity to its citizens, proves to be an anti-thesis to the climate resilience initiative. The Government must evolve renewable energy as a solution out of the present dilemma, as this will not only help reduce emissions but also display India’s seriousness regarding climate change.