India’s early warning systems are not “technological luxuries but strategic investments in resilience”, Principal Secretary to Prime Minister P.K. Mishra emphasised at the ongoing G20 ministerial meeting in Durban.
In a session on disaster risk reduction (DRR), Mr. Mishra outlined India’s multi-agency architecture integrating meteorological, hydrological, seismic, and oceanographic institutions through a Common Alert Protocol–compliant Integrated Alert System, which had already issued over 109 billion alerts. He urged the G20 to strengthen interoperable regional platforms, shared data protocols, and joint capacity-building initiatives under the global ‘Early Warnings for All’ framework. India, he said, viewed early warning as a global public good: inclusive, multilingual, and anticipatory.
In another event on ‘Financing DRR’, Mr. Mishra detailed India’s five-pillar financing strategy aligned with the G20 voluntary high-level principles. He described India’s constitutionally anchored model under the Finance Commission as having ensured a multi-year rules-based DRR allocations, decentralised funding to the States and local bodies, and evidence-based prioritisation through a national Disaster Risk Index.
