Context: Recently, UNESCAP South Asia and Pacific virtually organised a special dialogue on disaster and climate resilience in South Asia during the Fourth South Asia Forum on SDGs.
Key Highlights

• It was jointly organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and the Government of Maldives.
• The key objectives of the High Level meeting were to identify the opportunities and imperatives to overcome the challenges in implementing the systemic approach to disaster and public health risk management.
• The other objectives were to formulate the strategies for capitalizing on existing regional and sub-regional cooperation mechanism including the South Asian Forum on SDG.
• It aims to scale up multi-hazard and multi-sectoral preparedness systems for future cascading disasters.
• It highlighted that South Asian nations are facing challenges of extreme weather events like floods, cyclone, heat waves, cold waves, landslides and drought as well as COVID-19 pandemic and its recovery.

Initiatives taken by India on SDG

• The vision for eliminating single-use plastics, expansion of forest cover, improvement and restoration of 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 have already started yielding positive results.
• India took the initiative for the coalition for resilient infrastructure and announced the global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), at the UN Climate Action Summit 2019.
• India is also hosting SAARC Disaster Management Centre which works closely with Universities of SAARC and BIMSTEC member States.

Additional Information
United Nations ESCAP

• It serves as the United Nations’ regional hub promoting cooperation among countries to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.
• It is the largest regional intergovernmental platform with 53 Member States and 9 associate members.
• It has emerged as strong regional think-tank offering countries sound analytical products that shed insight into the evolving economic, social and environmental dynamics of the region.
• Its objective is to promote inclusive and sustainable economic and social development in the Asia-Pacific region, with priority accorded to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.