India and the UK will jointly launch a new Global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, first mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September, British envoy Dominic Asquith said on Wednesday.
“We are strong supporters of Prime Minister Modi’s proposal for a global coalition and we will co-launch that coalition,” Asquith told reporters.
The coalition will be a loose collective of countries adept at handling post-disaster infrastructure development and India has sounded out key players such as Japan to back the initiative. The initiative’s aim is to complement, not compete with, UN organisations involved in relief efforts.
India had announced the creation of a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) soon after the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in New Delhi in 2016.
At the Osaka summit, Prime Minister Modi had invited the G20 countries to join a global coalition on disaster resilience.
Representatives from 33 countries had agreed to set up a Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) during the second International Workshop on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (IWDRI) held in March this year. The agreement was made against the backdrop of the destruction of the Mozambique port city of Beira, home to 500,000 people.
The international workshop agreed that an Interim Secretariat of the CDRI will be established in New Delhi, with support from the Indian government.