Science-Policy Interface for Disaster Risk Management in India: Toward an Enabling Environment

Abstract

The 2013 Uttarakhand floods highlighted the enormous challenges faced by disaster risk management organizations and actors who had to deal with it on a real-time basis. Unusual and extreme rainfalls accompanied by a series of cloudbursts triggered the flooding. In recent times there has been a significant increase in the quantum of scientific research on such weather- and climate-related extremes in some of the most vulnerable regions in India. Although the role of science and research has been adequately recognized and included in India's national development policies and programmes, including the Disaster Management Policy (2009), integration of this accumulating scientific and research evidence into disaster management policies, planning, and practices in the country has been limited. Uttarakhand floods were followed by Cyclone Phailin (2013), and the untimely hailstorms in central India (March 2014). The resulting challenges for the country and its policy makers are complex and gigantic. It is under these emerging circumstances of complexities that the urgency for proactive and effective science-policy interface is discussed. Building on the existing institutional and policy opportunities in India, an enabling environment to facilitate such science- policy interface for disaster risk management is suggested. We discuss collaboration, co-production, coherence, and continuity as some of the organizing principles of this enabling environment.