Our Correspondent
New Delhi, Nov. 3 (EMN): The Swiss Agency for Development and Corporation sponsored project - Indian Himalayans Climate Adaptation Programme is all set to organise a media workshop for Nagaland journalists on climate change issues in December this year.
The workshop will be organised as part of the undertaking capacity building programmes for 300 journalists in the 12 Indian Himalayan states.
"I'm happy to state that we've already organised workshops in Uttarakhand, Manipur, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Mizoram with participation of over 100 journalists," said the head of cooperation and counsellor of Switzerland embassy, Marylaure Crettaz. " The next workshop will be held in Nagaland in December this year. Similar workshops are planned across the remaining Himalayan states in 2018 and 2019."
Switzerland embassy official was speaking during a daylong National media workshop (by Centre for Media Studies )on climate change in the Indian Himalayan region in New Delhi on Thursday.
IHCAP, which is a project under the global programme on climate change and environment of the Swiss Agency for Development and Corporation (SDC), aims to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities in the Himalayas and enhancing the capacities of research institutions and decision makers and it being implemented in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.
The Swiss official also said,“In Manipur a few weeks ago, we had the great pleasure to talk to authorities and legislators and to be accompanied by several media personnel, resulting in a very impressive media coverage.”
“Our primary focus is also to reduce the gap between sciences, policy and practice because we often see that they are not entirely in synergy with each other,” she added. “This is true for the Alps(mountains)where I come from and where we have experienced a very dramatic withdrawal of glaciers in 2017 with a loss of 3% of their volume in one year. This critical situation is also affecting the Himalayas which constitute a vital ecosystem for the Indian subcontinent and the whole region with a much larger population depending on them.”
IHCAP is planning to train 2000 state level officials for climate change adaptation projects in 12 Indian Himalayan states. It also plans to award 12 media fellowships.
During Thursday’s media workshop, Indian Gandhian environmentalist and social activist Chandi Prasad Bhatt who founded mother organisation to the chipko movement also made an hour long presentation on overview of climate change in Indian Himalayan .
Journalists from many Himalayan states including Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim and Uttrakhand attending the workshop also shared their experiences and challenges in doing climate change reporting in the Himalayas particularly in their respective states.
