In 2022, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres launched the ‘Early Warning for All’ (EW4ALL) initiative, aiming to provide universal protection against hydro-meteorological, climatological, and related environmental hazards by 2027 (WMO, 2022).
Do we have the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment? One of the most obvious questions, even the cycle of heat waves engulfing India this summer, has been missing during the largest democratic practices as 834 million Indians are voting in the 2024 General Elections.
Among the most climate-vulnerable groups or weaker sections of society, persons with disabilities (PwDs) have been facing extreme challenges due to climate change and disasters than others.
The rising threat from unpredictable and excessive rainfall, exacerbated by climate change, has warranted a conceptual debate for robust policy formulation. The urgency has never been felt more than now as we witness devastating incidents like dam breach in Laos, the State Deluge in Kerala (India) and frequent marooning of cities, including ‘smart cities’ in India, during monsoon. It has now become a common scenario across megacities and towns when torrential rains play havoc with daily lives of people leading to deaths and destruction of properties.
Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government came to power in India in 2014, the nomenclature of policies has been either Sanskritised or Indianised. With a tech-savvy Prime Minister on the steering wheel, the government is communicating with the general public through catchy one-liners that are quite apt for character-restricted social media like Twitter. Latest in this catchy pronouncement is the Foreign Secretary’s 'SAARC Yatra', as he rounded up tours of four neighbouring countries in the first week of March.