To Stop Uttarakhand-Type Kands

Context: Recent devastation in Uttarakhand underlines the fact that that glacier melts and weather variability is here to stay and thus requires proactive steps to tackle its impacts.

Steps to be taken: To tackle disasters due to glacier melts and weather variability.

• Increase capacity for disaster preparedness and response: E.g.
  • By increasing resources, capacity and mandate for risk-informed programming of agencies like National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Border Roads Organisation (BRO).
  • Inter-ministerial and integrated disaster risk programming at all levels. (including budget)
• Increased data collection to predict the occurrence of ‘tipping points’ and their magnitudes;
  • High-resolution data on physiographic factors (altitude, weather, slopes, terrain)
  • Community vulnerabilities and climatic data.
• Adopt community-based disaster preparedness: As local community can mobilize quickly and know their own populations best.
• Pressurize developed countries to faster transition into net-zero carbon economies: by changing the current model of development.
• Implement Article 6 of the Paris Agreement: It deals with Carbon markets that have the potential to get countries to reduce emissions and to generate benefits of $250 billion per year in 2030.
• Increase funding for adaptation and resilience:
  • This is extremely low now. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), ‘adaptation’-related funding will be $300 billion low compared to needs related to mitigation.
    • E.g. funding renewable energy technologies will require $1.3 trillion.
  • Rope in the private sector, bilateral and multilateral donor agencies to give due importance to adaptation funding like the mitigation.
  • Create Resilience bonds: To incentive the private sector to invest in livelihoods and resilience.
    • Ensure there is a real measurement of additional resilience and not ‘impact washing’, currently rife on the green bonds side.
• Acknowledging changing characteristics of glaciers: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), glaciers are at high risk of melting.