Remarks
ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here and being a part of this incredibly valuable initiative. Thank you Amit [Prothi], for your leadership of this Coalition the last several months. Thank you as well, Dr. [P. K.] Mishra, for the Government of India’s sustained commitment to disaster resilience, in India and around the world.
As we all know, it was the Government of India’s leadership that helped create this Coalition – out of a fierce belief that disaster resilience efforts will be most successful when driven not just by governments, but by everyone.
And this is consistent with the way India has grown and thrived in so many domains, with all hands on deck. As the climate crisis accelerates – as floodwaters still submerge parts of Pakistan, drought still ravages East Africa, snowstorms tear through the American West and India itself braces for devastating heat waves – as it becomes clearer and clearer that no one government can stem the tide of impending disaster, that vision is more important than ever. And we need to build a movement where disaster resilience is driven by everyone – all hands on deck.
Your new strategy, which will be launched this year, I think offers a roadmap to realize this vision. It calls for Coalition members to find and engage partners in government, multilateral organizations, private companies and communities themselves – because that is the way we will meet the needs of the most climate imperiled communities.
In the past year, this Coalition has collaborated to make significant progress.
The United Kingdom, Australia, and the European Union partnered with India to establish the Infrastructure Resilience Accelerator Fund, a $50 million fund that brings tangible support to small island states – the countries that contribute the least to climate change, and yet are the most imperiled by it.
And the United Nations, universities, and governments, including agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, came together to create the Global Flagship Report. This is the first global report that provides data on how many communities have adopted resilient infrastructure practices, and which measures the success of such efforts in the face of climate harms. The report will provide valuable data and tools that will help us address infrastructure vulnerabilities and support essential services for communities at risk.
But the truth is, as much as we are all committed to building more disaster-resilient infrastructure, our commitments alone are not sufficient. Such infrastructure needs to be designed and built by people – electricians, engineers, architects, and urban planners. And the problem is – one problem among many – is that existing workers in these fields often aren’t trained in how to strengthen disaster resilience in their work – and only a few courses and modules exist for the next generation of infrastructure experts.
To address this problem, we have to step outside our traditional partnerships and collaborate with those best placed to help design solutions, in this case, academic partners. So, we’re committing up to $5 million for a partnership between American and Indian institutions of higher education. We’re going to, together, create modules and training programs that train not just students, but current workers, in the skills they need to build disaster resilience into their projects. And we’ll do so in partnership with colleges and universities – institutions that are best positioned to help us close this skills gap, and with whom the Coalition can more fulsomely engage.
USAID is going to continue to engage more partners to make the fight to build community resilience a global fight. USAID can work to bring in more U.S. federal agencies to donate their experience in emergency management or engineering to the most climate-imperiled communities. And I know when I was in India, this is something that our Indian counterparts are very interested in working with other U.S. agencies.
We, here at CDRI, can better engage the private sector. Private companies contribute less than two percent of total investments for adaptation and resilience – yet we have 400 companies who, by joining this Coalition, have signaled that they want to support this work. They’re ready to join us. It’s on us now to find ways to engage them – to draw not just on their resources, but on their expertise and global reach.
If we are to help every community withstand disaster, it’s on all of us to identify new and existing partnerships that can help us strengthen community resilience – and to build a movement driven not just by governments, but by all.
Thank you so much.