Correspondent
GUWAHATI, February 25
[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nion Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) has taken ‘real action’ to monitor the state action plans on climate change in the country.
The real action on climate change was started only recently as there was no fund for the climate change programmes, according to Joint Secretary of MoEF Ravi S Prasad.
Speaking on the first day of the two-day conference on ‘Climate change adaptation: Priorities for Research, Policy and practices in North East India’ at NEDFi hall here, Prasad said so far 28 states have submitted their drafts on state action plan on climate change of which 11 were endorsed by the MoEF.“Among the activities, frequent meeting and activities of the eight priorities national missions are on,” he said and appealed to the NE states to prioritize the action points.
Informing that states have been asked to set up climate change cells and get the feedback on what’s happening in their respective areas, he said steps are on to set up a national institute on climate change studies as well.
He added around 80-85 observatory centres will be set up across the country besides roping in institutions such as North Eastern Hill University for certain research activities for certain climate change studies in the region.
“We should be able to tackle the situation with the multi-disciplinary activities, he opined.
Manipur and Nagaland government representatives, participating in the conference, shared their grievances in taking up climate change activities in their respective states due to the lack cooperation from the other concerned government departments while Meghalaya’s senior official CP Marak informed the gathering that they have listed as many as 150 climate change actions points in their state. Prof BK Tiwari of NEHU said as per their study, the water resources of Aizawl and Kohima will be adversely affected due to climate change. However. he did not elaborate on the issue.
“We’re not very sure of the result as science of climate change is not definite and subsequently not to convince the financial department,” Rajendra P Agarwalla, a senior forest official of Assam felt. The government representatives from Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh also shared their views on the climate change issues.
The conference, organized by Guwahati-based NGO Aaranyak in collaboration with Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), National Institute of Administrative Research and German based GIZ, was formally inaugurated by a team of senior officials led by Joint Secretary, Ministry of DoNER, AM Singh and Secretary, Aaranyak, Dr Bibhab K Talukdar.
