ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you so much, Alok for your remarks, all of your remarks today. And thank you more than that for your leadership over the last two years as the inaugural co-chair. Your work, specifically on the Infrastructure for Resilient Island States initiative, as well as your supervision of the COP Climate Conference, where I recall you masterfully chairing multiple sessions on the spot as well, have helped demonstrate to the world the importance of helping countries withstand the most devastating effects of climate change.
Dr. Mishra, I want to thank you for your leadership and sustained commitment to this Coalition, and I hope to recreate the degree of partnership that you and Alok demonstrated over the last two years. Your expertise on disaster resilience brings so much to this Coalition. I look forward to learning from you, and I greatly appreciate your advocacy of climate solutions, both within your government and on the global stage. I'd also like to thank Prime Minister Modi, although he's not here. His vision for the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure has been instrumental in shoring up the global response to climate change. And finally, I want to thank the CDRI Secretariat for welcoming me here today and for your endorsement of my nomination. I'm really pleased to accept the responsibility of co-chairing this Coalition and very much appreciate this show of trust in me and in the United States.
To state the obvious, the need for this Coalition has never been more pressing. Irreversible harm has already befallen our planet and made climate-related disasters unavoidable. Now, every nation on earth, including my own, is forced to grapple with the repercussions. Here in the U.S., our roads and bridges are suffering damages. They are cracked and boiled by record breaking temperatures. Down south, stronger and more frequent hurricanes are destroying electric grids and power lines, causing billions of dollars' worth of damage. And out west, droughts and high temperatures are leading to forest fires that ravage entire communities, igniting houses, schools, small businesses, and anything else in their path. But, despite the hardships many Americans are facing, we know that the nations least responsible for producing the emissions that fuel climate change are, of course, facing its most dire consequences.
Back in November, at COP, I had the chance to speak with a young woman from Sudan named Nasreen, as some of you know. She detailed her experience during one of Sudan's worst floods in over 100 years, which occurred in September of 2020. There was total destruction everywhere, she said. Every house was covered by water. She then went on to tell the story of a woman who was in labor being physically carried to the hospital because roads and bridges, infrastructure that had felt permanent to the landscape, were suddenly washed away. Sudan is responsible for 0.05 percent of all global emissions. Yet flooding, droughts, and temperatures that hurt the country's crop yields have become the norm. To this day, vital infrastructure means damaged or entirely destroyed from the flood of two years ago.
Sadly, this trend is not isolated to Sudan. Poor nations all over the world are often left behind while their infrastructure crumbles. But the members of this Coalition can help change that reality if we can marshal the resources and continue coordinating in a spirit of mutual respect, cooperation, and trust. Thanks to the leadership of the Government of India, CDRI provides a framework for that coordination, for the exchange of ideas among peers. It creates and disseminates technological solutions that address the specific resilience needs of communities all around the world. As co-chair, I hope to expand the Coalition's impact by extending and diversifying its membership to new partners that will bolster our effectiveness and help us to tune our response bilaterally, collectively, to their specific needs, but nations alone cannot fund the investment we need to protect against climate change.
We've got to deepen our engagement with the private sector so that we can tap into their resources and leverage their technical expertise. As you all know well, according to the World Bank, between 2015 and 2018, only 1.6 percent of all climate adaptation funding came from the private sector. To truly address the needs of nations around the world, we must galvanize the private sector to do more. We also must prioritize the gender impacts of our infrastructure and disaster recovery efforts because although climate change affects people worldwide. Evidence shows that women and girls bear a disproportionate burden of the worst impacts. In fact, climate-related events and natural disasters are more likely to kill women and girls. The United States government is committed to trying to address these disparities. With the help of CDRI members, we will leverage partnerships with U.S.-based universities, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and other federal agencies, including USAID, to promote gender sensitive, inclusive infrastructure, and disaster recovery efforts.
The Biden-Harris Administration has already made resilience to climate-based disasters one of its top priorities. President Biden's Build Back Better World infrastructure and PREPARE adaptation initiatives will seek to commit and mobilize trillions of dollars in the coming decades to support disaster resilient infrastructure and climate change adaptation in low- and middle-income countries around the world. A clear complement to the CDRI's critical work.
I look forward to supporting CDRI's efforts in the coming years. As the climate crisis intensifies, the work of this body will be vital to saving lives and protecting economies from climate-related shocks and sustained temperature changes.
Thank you all again for your support.