Building Climate Resilience
When a natural disaster strikes anywhere in the world, our immediate thought is, thank god it did not happen to us. A very natural response indeed, but should it be our only response? Of course not. The need of the hour is disaster risk reduction, especially when you live in a country like India. According to the National Disaster Management Authority’s annual report for 2020-2021, India is vulnerable, in varying degrees, to floods, droughts, cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes, urban flooding, landslides, avalanches and forest fire. Of a total of 36 states and UTs, 27 are disaster-prone. More than half of the landmass of India is prone to earthquakes of moderate to very high intensity and 12 per cent is prone to floods and river erosion. Three-fourths of the coastline is prone to cyclones and tsunamis. Besides this, food security in India is also being compromised as 68 per cent of the cultivable land is vulnerable to drought. These horrifying facts and figures are enough to encourage us for building resilience, adapting to climate change and working towards disaster risk reduction.