Climate Change Innovations in South Asia - SAR-CLIMATE

Innovation to Impact: Emerging Technology to Address Climate and Disaster Resilience

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Climate change is a major driver of disaster losses and failed development. Climate-related disasters, including extreme weather events, have dominated the global disaster landscape in the 21st century, which has led to shaping new approaches to science and practice in climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, and resilience building.

Over the years, science has become more accessible, acknowledging that it also needs to deal with uncertainty. Policymakers are becoming more familiar with science as more and more public policy issues call for science-based solutions. Therefore, interactions between policymakers and science are increasingly complex and nonlinear, as opposed to early conceptions.

In South Asia, the decision-making spaces are shared by science and policymakers with the local community. The shared decision space is characterized by co-learning and knowledge production. The CARE for South Asia project empowers decision-makers with tools, products, and services to act locally on climate-sensitive issues such as disaster-related public policy and planning, agriculture, water, and transport.

Leveraging advanced technologies and prioritizing a demand-driven approach to climate resilience, the CARE for South Asia project is offering a platform for using innovative approaches to help decision-makers respond better to a changing climate. The Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC) and the TechEmerge Resilience Challenge open up a new window of opportunities to mainstream technology for climate adaptation and disaster resilience for the benefit of all.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, national disaster management offices (NDMOs), public finance and planning, supply chain drivers such as water and transportation, and public health authorities in South Asian countries are facing unprecedented challenges but are also presented with unparalleled opportunities in fighting an uphill battle against ever-increasing climate and extreme weather events.

This presents incredible opportunities to deploy emerging and future technologies to anticipate and mitigate the disaster and climate risk to protect the development gains and build the resilience of communities, assets, livelihoods, and systems. As technological development scales up, technologies for all aspects of disaster and climate resilience will also need to be adopted more widely.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, robotics, and others are critical to accelerating this process, making disaster and climate resilience smarter, more efficient, affordable, and accurate—from multi-hazard detection and early warning to resilient connectivity solutions to climate-smart crop management, etc. To make these elements functional, trained people with the right skillsets as well as resources for the application of technologies are a must.

With technical and financial support of US$3.5 million from the World Bank and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and implemented by ADPC under the umbrella of the CARE for South Asia project, we aim to support innovation in climate resilience building through the provision of grants to pilot-proven transformative, scalable, affordable, and accessible resilience technology solutions.

Mr. Aslam Perwaiz is the Deputy Executive Director of Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC).

About Post Author

Saravanakuma Ramalingam

saravana@abu.org.my

http://abu.org.my

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