NEW DELHI: India-led Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) on Monday announced a $2.5 million fund to support cities to improve awareness, enhance planning, build financial resources, and integrate resilience into infrastructure operations to mark its fifth foundation day.
Cities in 30 low and middle-income countries including India will be eligible for funding under this urban infrastructure resilience programme (UIRP) via international organisations, multilateral and bilateral cooperation agencies, NGOs, or the United Nations.
CDRI said this fund will respond to the demand of member countries for technical assistance to ensure their investments are aligned towards disaster and climate resilience of new and existing infrastructure. “This will result in avoiding asset loss, reducing spending on repair and minimising disruption of critical services. Additionally, it will support economic growth and social development through enhanced service resilience; reduced carbon emissions resulting in improved biodiversity, cleaner air, and water,” a CDRI document said.
“The need for strengthening the resilience of cities against future climate scenarios is urgent as the world faces record-breaking occurrences and frequency of extreme weather events impacting infrastructure systems affecting lives and livelihoods,” it added.
In the ‘request for proposal’ document for the fund, CDRI said these 30 countries face high levels of urbanization, increasing vulnerability and disaster risks and have a probable average annual loss attributed to climatic hazards of $397 billion.
{{/usCountry}}In the ‘request for proposal’ document for the fund, CDRI said these 30 countries face high levels of urbanization, increasing vulnerability and disaster risks and have a probable average annual loss attributed to climatic hazards of $397 billion.
{{/usCountry}}Considering that much of the infrastructure is yet to be built in these countries, embedding resilience in their design and execution provides the opportunity to lock in resilience as opposed to risk, CDRI argued.
A single-city proposal can range from $150,000 to $500,000 and a multi-city proposal (within the same country) can range from $250,000 to $750,000.
In May this year, CDRI launched a $8 million fund targeting only small island developing states. CDRI was launched in 2019 on September 23 and acts as a global partnership of national governments, UN agencies, multilateral development banks, financing institutions, private sector, academic and knowledge institutions that aims to promote the resilience of infrastructure systems to climate and disaster risks.