BRICS disaster relief framework requires local action for success

New Delhi: With the BRICS Summit concluding with the New Delhi Declaration, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has outlined three priorities going forward, including continued cooperation among the members of the bloc, a long-term agenda it hopes China will also engage with when it takes over the BRICS presidency, and greater sharing of best practices between countries.

Speaking to PTI, Krishna S Vatsa, NDMA member and Head of the Department, said the key takeaways for other countries lie in India’s record on preparedness and reduction in mortality due to cyclones, along with a larger grassroots-level campaign for strengthening disaster management down to the last mile.

The BRICS New Delhi Declaration introduced two voluntary reference documents to help the member nations coordinate on disasters.

BRICS countries to share data for advanced warning systems

The BRICS Guidelines for Disaster Management Early Warning Data Integration provide a framework for countries to share weather, flood and earthquake-tracking data to improve advanced warning systems. The other document — the BRICS Voluntary Principles for Climate-Resilient Urban Infrastructure — offers a set of optional benchmarks to help cities factor climate-risk assessments into their local building plans.

Asked how these commitments can be turned into practical rules that work across borders, Manisha Choudhary, national coordinator at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in India, noted that while effective adaptation is about combining robust scientific assessments and evidence with local, traditional knowledge, involving communities as active participants plays an important role too.

“Institutional capacity, systems and financing play a critical role in delivering adaptation measures on ground. While national frameworks and institutions provide the enabling environment, including policies, standards and resources for action, local knowledge and community participation ensures that solutions are appropriate to the identified risks and grounded in local context,” Choudhary told PTI.

“Involvement of the community as active participants in identifying risks, shaping solutions and building resilience plays an important role,” she added.

She further highlighted that the challenge is turning shared principles into planning, infrastructure development, investment and implementation of actions across different contexts, moving from risk awareness to risk-informed development.

“This means climate and disaster-risk information should influence where and how we plan cities, infrastructure and public services, and how we invest and prioritise vulnerable communities. It requires stronger links between climate-risk information, disaster-risk reduction, urban planning, financing and governance at all levels, essentially a whole-of-governance approach,” the UNEP official told PTI.

UNEP India’s collaboration with NDMA

The UNEP India supported the NDMA as a knowledge partner under India’s BRICS chairship in 2026. It contributed technical expertise across several disaster-risk-reduction workstreams, bringing a global perspective on climate resilience, urban planning, nature-based solutions, urban heat and resilient infrastructure into BRICS knowledge products and technical discussions, according to the UNEP.

At the local level, the UNEP supported the NDMA and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) in developing a framework for climate-resilient, climate-smart and inclusive infrastructure systems for the BRICS countries, including technical inputs on climate resilience, urban heat and nature-based solutions.

The UN body is also working at the sub-national level across states, such as Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Maharashtra and Delhi, to demonstrate replicable and scalable models of community-based adaptation, particularly in sustainable building design and passive cooling solutions.

Asked about the biggest challenge in implementing a community-based, people-centric approach, Choudhary said awareness remains the first and foremost hurdle.

“The first and foremost is awareness at all levels, as actions for effective adaptation require a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. The starting point is to generate awareness of potential risks, challenges and possible alternative solutions relevant to the local context,” she said, adding that the next step would be to plan action and build capacities to implement solutions on the ground, while also bridging the finance gap.

“To scale solutions, we need to invest in awareness, skills and locally-relevant and sustainable technological solutions. Above all, financing will play a critical role,” Choudhary said.

According to the UNEP official, the path forward involves a shift from reacting to disasters towards scientifically anticipating and reducing risk, from treating climate and disaster risks in isolation towards integrated, risk-informed development, and from viewing communities primarily as recipients of resilience measures towards recognising them as active partners in building resilience.

BRICS nations to collaborate on disaster management

Speaking about the two documents on disaster management that were welcomed by the BRICS nations, C K Mishra, former secretary at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, underscored that these are a statement of intent, where the member nations have agreed to create a similar resilient structure in case of disasters.

“The relief-and-rescue efforts do not change. It is only the reconstruction part that changes across geographies, and that, according to me, is the basis of this thought process of a unified structure. It basically means that the entire bloc will cooperate with each other in disaster management and reach out to countries which are hit by disasters,” Mishra, who earlier spearheaded key policies like the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) and the India Cooling Action Plan (ICAP), told PTI.

“And since India has been a leader in disaster management, the preparatory work and the rehabilitation, we have done extremely well,” he added.

Mishra further stressed that India has enough examples to share with the BRICS member countries in times of crisis, and can use that experience as a foundation for other nations that are going through a disaster.

Highlighting that India’s disaster preparedness and response have improved dramatically in the last few years, he said the documents are expected to act like a unified structure that will help other nations with disaster management, particularly with relief and rescue.