Role of UNDRR in India: India is a disaster-prone nation because it has a broad geographical coverage and a wide range of environmental changes. Whether it is catastrophic floods and cyclones, earthquakes or droughts, such natural calamities are on the rise with increased activity because of climate change and unplanned development. In that regard, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) is involved in influencing the disaster preparedness and resilience strategies that India is pursuing. To the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) engaged in humanitarian response and sustainable development response profiles, UNDRR facilitating structures, resources, and networks are indispensable to help guide and assist them.
UNDRR is the international organisation with the mandate of facilitating the United Nations system-wide efforts to work towards the reduction of disaster risk and the realisation of resilient communities, and its strategies geared towards these are in tandem with the Sendai framework on disaster risk reduction (2015-2030). It is a multi-faceted engagement in India, such as providing technical advice, risk-based development, and ensuring an inclusive process of policy. Many NGOs throughout the nation play the role of implementing partners, which allows translating UNDRR global plans into localised community-centred initiatives.
Indian NGOs play an essential role in the implementation of policy into practice, whether through grassroots awareness-raising, aiding vulnerable people in areas at risk of hazards, or contributing to early warning systems and climate adaptation. UNDRR works closely with civil society and makes sure that risk reduction is not only a top-down effort of the government but a community effort enabled as a bottom-up approach.
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In this article, the current cooperation between UNDRR and Indian non-governmental organisations shall be discussed as the one that is transforming disaster risk management not only in reactive relief activities but also in proactive, inclusive and sustainable resilience-building in the country.
Table of Contents
Understanding UNDRR and the Sendai Framework in the Indian Context
The Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) is the Office of the United Nations that facilitates the coordination of international efforts in mitigating the risk of disasters and resilience building among countries. The core of its work lies in the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction (2015 2030), the first agreement ever adopted by the states that are members of the United Nations, of which India is one, with an emphasis on the transition in disaster reduction priorities to prevention, disaster preparedness, and resiliency and are taken as the main aspects of Sendai Framework.
The priority areas described in the Sendai Framework include four categories:
- The disaster risk knowledge
- The power of risk disaster governance
- Investments in resiliency through investment in disaster risk reduction
- Improving disaster preparedness towards a good response and recovery
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These priorities are pertinent in India in particular. India is at a great risk due to its great population density, various geographical makeups, as well as its exposure to various natural hazards. The Sendai Framework has contributed to the development of national policies such as the National Disaster Management Plan (NDMP), which incentivises a multi-stakeholder approach including government agencies, the department of local authorities, Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academic institutions, and community organisations.
From the perspective of NGOs, the importance of UNDRR and the Sendai Framework is based on the focus on local engagements and participatory risk reduction, and people-oriented resilience approaches. Indian NGOs working in disaster-prone regions find in UNDRR a global ally that publicly sponsors their role in the creation of awareness, capacity building and empowerment of communities.
UNDRR contributes to closing the gap between policy on the international level and practice in the field by contextualising the global frameworks to the local contexts. Its assistance allows NGOs to go beyond short-term assistance to long-term and systemic approaches to disaster resilience with women, children, the aged and people with disabilities at the mainstream of disaster response and planning.
How NGOs Collaborate with UNDRR on Community Resilience
Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) can be of of great importance in practicing what the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) formulates in the main strategies to a local level. In India, where the various communities are exposed to frequent disasters i.e., floods, droughts, earthquakes, and cyclones, NGOs become a crucial medium between vulnerable populations and the policy frameworks such as the Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction ((2015) 2030).
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UNDRR prescribes the multi-stakeholder approach, which works through the cooperation of NGOs among the most significant partners in strengthening community resilience. Numerous Indian NGOs directly collaborate with the UNDRR and other national agencies, promoting awareness, conducting vulnerability studies, and providing grassroots programs on the preparation for disasters. Such partnerships are usually geared towards inclusive risk reduction, and specific objectives include ensuring marginalised groups (including women, tribal, and persons with disabilities, among other groups) are involved in the planning and response process.
To cite an example, NGOs collaborate with local governments to provide training to villages’ disaster response teams, make mock drills, and develop emergency warning systems. Some of them are involved in climate adaptation initiatives, resilient infrastructure promotion, or disaster-related psycho-social support directly after accidents and disasters. NGOs also play a role in evidence-based policymaking in line with the priorities of UNDRR, as demonstrated by their use of data and responses from the community.
UNDRR promotes these efforts with technical advice, funding, providing international blogs to share knowledge, as well acknowledging local good work. NGOs, in their turn, reinforce these resources at the ground level, thereby making sure that resilience building becomes inclusive, sustainable, and locally based.
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Finally, the prospect of good collaboration between UNDRR and NGOs in India suggests bottom-up disaster risk governance, where empowered communities become not only the recipients of goods aimed at enhancing safety and resilience, but, instead, the key drivers of their safety and resilience.
Capacity Building, Risk Reduction, and Inclusive Development
The main principle of disaster resilience as a complex rationale about how disaster resilience is the capacity field within which capacity building is the most significant belief and requires giving the communities, institutions and local actors the knowledge, tools and the confidence that they can prepare and recover as a consequence of disasters. Collaboration of the UNDRR with the various NGOs in India has played an important role in providing effective processes that achieve this agenda at the grass-root level.
UNDRR espouses the notion that disaster risk reduction (DRR) should be integrated in the development plans. These include making DRR a part of housing, health, education, water and sanitation programs, in which the NGOs are currently highly involved. UNDRR provides the support to these NGOs by offering training in technical fields, providing tool kits, and policy advice to the NGOs which support them in bolstering their institutional capacities and focusing their work on best-case practices in the world.
The Indian NGOs, in their turn, deploy those strategies through the community-based risk assessment, the development of the local disaster preparedness teams, and the organization of the training courses to women, youth, and the marginalized population. Such actions make DRR not only technically correct but also sensitive as well as socially inclusive.
Notably, NGOs are also of fundamental use towards inclusive development, a development that has seen to it that the most vulnerable groups are not deprived. Through their promotion of accessibility, gender equity and participatory planning, they improve disaster policies and program across many fronts based on the realities experienced by at-risk populations. This has much in common with the approach that UNDRR recommends as part of the whole-of-society approach, as provided in the Sendai Framework.
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In such mutual initiatives, capacity building is not just a technical process anymore, but a process of empowerment and the communities are empowered such that they are not just survivors of a disaster, but they also flourish in the aftermath. The strategy promotes sustainable development and long-term resilience of India that is highly diverse and at-risk.
Challenges and the Way Forward: Strengthening NGO-UNDRR Partnerships
Although the partnership between the UNDRR and NGOs in India has shown visible results in disaster risk reduction (DRR), a few issues persist in preventing the achievement of resilient and integrative communities. These include a lack of funds, technical abilities, poor coordination among stakeholders, as well as bureaucracies encountered in the process of implementing the programs at the grassroots level.
The first critical problem is the unavailability of sustainable funding for the community-based DRR programs. The short running cycle of many NGOs’ projects does not allow for maintaining capacity-building initiatives or even conducting follow-up studies of the long-term effects. Moreover, due to the inability to access global platforms and technical resources offered by UNDRR, smaller grassroots organisations are usually challenged, and local needs and international frameworks become remote.
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The other problem is the difficulty in mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction. Though NGOs play an active role in the field of education, health, and livelihoods, DRR does not necessarily become fully incorporated into such initiatives. An imperative need has been to enhance the cross-sectoral coordination, besides the integration of the DRR principles within the larger development agendas.
We need to go further towards building more effective institutional alliances among UNDRR, national disaster agencies and NGOs. This involves the establishment of more inclusive forums of dialogue, the provision of local training as well as the ease of access to funds and sources of knowledge and expertise to smaller NGOs. Increasing the preparedness and accountability can also be achieved by spreading technology transfer, sharing open data, and involving the community in innovations.
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In addition, long-term prognosis of youthful involvement, gender-responsive programming, and local leadership will make DRR initiatives not only future-proof, but also based on the local contexts.
The NGO-UNDRR partnership can become a potent force by enhancing trust, coordination and support mechanisms and becoming a reality-shifting, resilient, equitable, disaster-prepared India.
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