The New Delhi-based Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) has assumed significance in the Quad architecture with a White House statement asserting that the four-nation grouping will work with CDRI on disaster risk reduction (DRR) for extreme weather events, building on the Indo-Pacific infrastructure initiative, Trend reports citing Times of India.
At the recent Tokyo summit, the Quad nations - the US, India, Australia and Japan - laid emphasis on building need-based sustainable infrastructure in the region, announcing a corpus of $50 billion to be spent over the next five years.
The DRR is gaining priority with India, ahead of the Quad announcement, creating a financing architecture of $7.5 billion dedicated to reconstruct disaster-hit infrastructure. The principal secretary to the PM, PK Mishra, on Monday had announced the creation of the financing architecture. While the Quad fund will be spent on creation of "demand-driven infrastructure" in the region, India's initiative would promote its own version of the "owner-driven reconstruction".
"The Quad will cooperate on DRR for extreme weather events, including through the CDRI, building on the Quad's joint session on strengthening Indo-Pacific infrastructure and communities at the international CDRI conference," the White House statement had said.