Bay of Bengal diplomacy: 

Bay of Bengal diplomacy: 

Context

India to host the first Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation Disaster Management Exercise (BIMSTEC DMEx 2017) starting October 10.

What is the significance of this exercise?

• The BIMSTEC region, comprising 22% of the global population, is exposed to an ever-increasing threat from natural disasters.
• BIMSTEC has the opportunity to enable a paradigm policy shift from a traditional relief centric, reactive approach towards a joint, proactive, holistic one.
• Despite a decade of meaningful efforts in the sector, political and security tensions between members have hindered progress on regional cooperation and action.
• The renewed focus and enthusiasm of the regional leaders to rejuvenate BIMSTEC is therefore a welcome opportunity to boost effective cooperation in the sub-region.
• In the absence of a joint integrated mechanism to address the spurt in the scale, frequency and impacts of disasters, the response has largely been reactive and limited to post-incident crisis management.

What are the steps needed to implement the proposal?

• In order to strengthen inter-governmental coordination, the first step would be to devise a Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) regional action plan.
• The road map should reflect a clear strategy to integrate DRR in all development programmes of member nations, adopt a multi-hazard and multi-sectoral approach to DRR
• All member nations must work towards common outcomes through institutionalizing partnerships across all levels of governance.

What role can India play to strengthen its position within BIMSTEC?

Role of a leader

• India should adopt regional cooperation on environment and disaster management as it is an opportunity for India to take a measured approach and add value to its own regional agenda.
• It has further volunteered to lead the Environment and Natural Disaster Agenda under BIMSTEC
• It must make the best of this opportunity by translating the learnings from the disaster management experiences of SAARC and ASEAN.

On-going disputes

• India’s tensions over transboundary Teesta river water sharing with Bangladesh, and the Rohingya refugee crisis between Myanmar and Bangladesh are cases in point.
• Like other regional blocs, this initiative is set to take place amidst a long-standing climate of political discord amongst some of the member nations — Bangladesh, India and Myanmar.

What are the challenges that need to be addressed?

Building capacity

• Given the regional nature of the threats, there is an urgent need for setting up of regional institutional capacity for threat assessment and designing response strategies.

Awareness

• An important challenge for disaster preparedness is addressing the knowledge gaps among the member countries.

Research and development

• Setting up of research taskforces on various climate change and environment risks in the BIMSTEC sub-region can develop a common understanding of the threats
• It shall further create standards for emergency management and come up with cost-effective solutions.

About BIMSTEC

• Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectcoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is a regional organization comprising seven Member States lying in the littoral and adjacent areas of the Bay of Bengal constituting a contiguous regional unity.
• This sub-regional organization came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration.
• It constitutes seven Member States: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia.
• The regional group constitutes a bridge between South and South East Asia and represents a reinforcement of relations among these countries. BIMSTEC has also established a platform for intra-regional cooperation between SAARC and ASEAN members.