India: Building resilience, locally!

The best way to start building resilience – to climate and disaster risk – is to start locally.

Assam is taking the lead in taking local action in India. Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) invited All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) to facilitate the two-day’s workshop on ‘Preparing Action Plan for Mainstreaming Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA)’; December 4-5, 2015, Guwahati, Assam. The Preparation of action plan is for three departments of Agricultures; Education; and Panchayat and Rural Department. Total 34 district and state Government officials joined the workshop to discuss and prepare the plan that support the department functions and stakeholders towards better preparedness for risk reduction and adaptation to climate change. Not many states have done this exercise in India.

Recently, ASDMA has conducted a training needs assessment (TNA) on DRR and CCA that resulted into integration of both. ASDMA moved ahead based on the TNA findings and initiated training for linking DRR and CCA at district level with ToT approach. The current planning initiative of ASDMA is to design sector specific actions with departmental officials for year 2016.

AIDMI initiated local actions with district and state authorities that promote and strengthen the integration of DRR and CCA. The base of these actions is IPCC’s SREX findings and local implementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) in India.

Above local action prepares India to better address the INDC challenge. It has taken up in COP21 in Paris. The workshop discussion emphasized the local implementation of the SFDRR, especially priority of action 3 – Investing in Disaster Risk Reduction for Resilience. The state and district departmental officials will initiate the pilots that build resilience at district level with support from ASDMA based on the outputs of this workshop. The safety of local institutions such as schools, hospitals; ways for financial inclusion such as microfinance and insurance; capacity building of stakeholders who engage actively in providing services were discuss by the group.

The workshop organised by ASDMA; facilitated jointly by ASDMA and AIDMI; under UNDP and GOI supported Project – “Enhancing Institutional and Community Resilience to Disaster and Climate Change”.