{"id":34684,"date":"2018-10-31T12:52:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T07:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=34684"},"modified":"2018-10-31T12:52:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T07:22:01","slug":"bay-of-bengal-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bay-of-bengal-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bay of Bengal diplomacy:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/bay-of-bengal-diplomacy\/article19831012.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bay of Bengal diplomacy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India to host the first Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation Disaster Management Exercise <\/span><b>(BIMSTEC DMEx 2017)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> starting October 10.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>What is the significance of this exercise?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The BIMSTEC region, comprising 22% of the global population, is exposed to an ever-increasing threat from natural disasters.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">BIMSTEC has the opportunity to enable a paradigm policy shift from a traditional relief centric, reactive approach towards a joint, proactive, holistic one.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Despite a decade of meaningful efforts in the sector, political and security tensions between members have hindered progress on regional cooperation and action.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What are the steps needed to implement the proposal?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In order to strengthen inter-governmental coordination, the first step would be to devise a Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) regional action plan.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All member nations must work towards common outcomes through institutionalizing partnerships across all levels of governance.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What role can India play to strengthen its position within BIMSTEC?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Role of a leader<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has further volunteered to lead the Environment and Natural Disaster Agenda under BIMSTEC<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It must make the best of this opportunity by translating the learnings from the disaster management experiences of SAARC and ASEAN.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>On-going disputes<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India\u2019s tensions over transboundary Teesta river water sharing with Bangladesh, and the Rohingya refugee crisis between Myanmar and Bangladesh are cases in point.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 \u2014 Bangladesh, India and Myanmar.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What are the challenges that need to be addressed?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Building capacity<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Awareness<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An important challenge for disaster preparedness is addressing the knowledge gaps among the member countries.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Research and development<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It shall further create standards for emergency management and come up with cost-effective solutions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>About BIMSTEC<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This sub-regional organization came into being on 6 June 1997 through the Bangkok Declaration. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It constitutes seven Member States: five deriving from South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and two from Southeast Asia.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bay of Bengal diplomacy:\u00a0 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&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/bay-of-bengal-diplomacy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Bay of Bengal diplomacy:\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704934508},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}