Pages

Friday, June 18, 2010

DISCUSSION ON WATER AND CLIMATE CHANGE

A group of leading experts on Wednesday deliberated on the crucial issues of water and climate change at a panel discussion organised jointly by Navdanya and Core Group for Tibetan Cause in New Delhi, the India Tibet Coordination Office based in the capital reported.

The panelists for the discussion were Dr Vandana Shiva, founder-director of Navdanya, Dr. Ramaswamy Iyer, former Secretary of Water Resources, Government of India, Mr B G Verghese, prominent senior journalist and a honourary professor of Centre for Policy Research, who was a recipient of Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Mr Vijay Kranti, Journalist and Tibet expert, and Mr Tenzin Norbu, executive head of Environment and Development Desk of Department of Information and International Relations, Central Tibetan Administration, Dharamsala.
Dr Vandaya Shiva raised the issue of water crisis in India and the disappearing ground water in Punjab, and the melting of glaciers in northern belt of India like Zanskar range.

Dr Ramaswamy Iyer discussed about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate change and later claimed that water crisis is created by us (human), referring to ‘greed vs. need.’

Mr B G Verghese, however, dealt more on dam constructions in China and he sensed less worried about the consequences of the China’s damming, as he suggested more concrete and common initiatives between India and China. He surfaced the reality of India’s expertise on water by saying that India did not have advance resources like climatologists, glaciologists and meteorologists.
Mr Vijay Kranti, through his pictorial presentation on Tibet, underlined that the massive population transfer in Tibet leads to the ecological disturbances inside Tibet.

Mr Tenzin Norbu stressed on damming and melting of the permafrost in Tibet, and global warming. He warned that, with the rise in the temperature of Tibet, the permafrost melts, which resulted in an irreversible damage to the Tibet’s ecosystem.

No comments:

Post a Comment