We asked the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, our partners in the Resilient Infrastructure theme, to tell us something about their work and their presence at COP26
Involvement with the COP Resilience Hub
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought out the need to focus on managing systemic and cascading risks and strengthening resilience; a lesson to heed and to make headway against climate change as well.
The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) seeks to play an influential role at COP26 and future COPs by showcasing its work dedicated to building disaster and climate resilient infrastructure. Resilience Hub will focus on ‘action to build resilience to the decades of climate impacts and other uncertainties’ and the Coalition’s presence at the Hub will underline the importance of action on infrastructure resilience and its direct contribution to the global agenda for adaptation.
CDRI functions as a multi-stakeholder platform, led and managed by national governments, where knowledge is generated and exchanged on different aspects of the disaster resilience of infrastructure.
Their work in Global Climate Resilience
CDRI aims to address the challenge of building resilience into infrastructure systems and associated development. As a Coalition of countries at all stages of development, CDRI enables partners to access knowledge and resources from other members, to make their infrastructure resilient and thus, contribute to each other’s economic growth and progress.
The objective is to promote rapid development of resilient infrastructure to respond to the Sustainable Development Goals’ imperatives of expanding universal access to basic services, enabling prosperity and decent work.
The Coalition is leading national and subnational projects and programmes aimed towards risk management and building disaster and climate resilience of infrastructure. CDRI will establish an Infrastructure for Resilient Island States (IRIS) in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to provide technical assistance on the multifaceted issues faced by infrastructure systems and promote disaster-resilience of infrastructure assets in SIDS.
What they’re looking forward to at this year’s COP
CDRI is also developing a dedicated Flagship Report on Disaster and Climate Resilient Infrastructure which will present the state of infrastructure globally.
CDRI’s mission is convergent with that of the COP26 – which is action on adaptation and resilience at the conference and beyond, and to help provide a strong collective voice on resilience. While CDRI’s members range from national governments, international agencies and private sector organisations, CDRI also engages with sub-national governments, urban local bodies, civil society organisations and knowledge institutions on mainstreaming disaster resilient infrastructure (DRI) for adaptation and resilience.
The sessions at COP26 are curated to provide a whole-of-society perspective on the effects of climate change on infrastructure, reaffirming CDRI’s commitment to leaving no one behind.