Chandigarh, February 25: The Punjab State Council for Science & Technology organized a webinar on ‘Innovative interventions for climate Resilience’ in collaboration with Deputy British High commission, Chandigarh here today. During the inaugural session, Mr. Andrew Ayre, British Deputy High Commissioner briefed the participants on COP 26 and the UK’s Presidency. He shared that with the incoming COP Presidency, the UK government will continue to push for much greater action around the world. It will include more actions at local level to reduce emissions & to build resilience with increased cooperation & support along a path for clean and resilient recovery.
This webinar was organised as a part of a series of capacity building workshops/webinars to be organized by PSCST with the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change to enhance resilience towards climate Change. UK is hosting the 26th session of Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Glasgow in November 2021.
Chief General Manager, NABARD, Dr. Rajiv Siwach, highlighted the importance of integration of INDCs and SDGs in rural development since more than 60% population of India is residing in rural areas. He focused on the role of NABARD in building an ecosystem where the rural communities are sufficiently empowered to participate in the development process and enable them to raise their standards of living by creating livelihood opportunities.
The Guest of Honour, Dr. Nisha Mehndirata, Advisor/ Scientist – G Climate Change Programme (CCP), DST, GoI discussed India’s strategies & initiatives to combat Climate Change. She highlighted the role played by DST in achieving India’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ & Sustainable Development Goals towards Global pool.
Dr. Jatinder Kaur Arora, Executive Director, PSCST drew the attention of the participants towards State Government’s interventions and commitments to address vulnerabilities of the State arising due to changing climatic conditions. She informed about the major upcoming initiative of development of the State Action Plan on Climate Change 2.0 for enhancing climate resilience.
At the onset of the Technical session Dr. Daljeet Kaur, Climate & Environemnt Adviser, UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office gave a keynote on the role of Innovations in addressing Climate Change. Dr. Inderjeet Singh, Vice Chancellor, GADVASU, shared his thoughts on ‘Reducing Vulnerability of Livestock Sector to Sustain Livelihood of Farmers’. Mr. Pritam Choudhury, ICICI Lombard shared that the Insurance product was designed to compensate the loss in milk yield due to extreme weather conditions using historical data for the Thermal Heat Index.
Professor Lucelia Rodriques, University of Nottingham, UK enumerated the importance of buildings types in a Changing Climatic scenario. She insisted on the need to rethink the way we design, build, occupy and dispose of our buildings so they are not only sustainable but also resilient to a changing climate. Lt. Col. Monish Ahuja (RTD.), Managing Director, Punjab Renewable energy Systems Pvt. Ltd., a pioneer in biomass supply chain management and scientific utilization shared his experience on mass utilization of biomass in various applications to produce useful products with net zero emissions.
