Ecology and Environment

Organizer: Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR),
                  National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI)

Venue: National Environmental Engineering Research Institute,
            Nehru Marg,
            Nagpur 440 020

Description:
International Conference on Recent Developments in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) & Integrated Approach for Carbon Management – Solutions, Technology Developments and Pollution Abatement (RDEIA-IACM 2012) will bring together the Indian and International R&D professionals and workers in the field of Environmental Impact Assessment, Environmental Science and Engineering, Green Chemistry and Green Technologies related to recent advances in Carbon Chemistry and to discuss new and exciting achievements in this field.

These manuals are aimed at expert appraisal committees, and hope to improve the quality of appraisal of projects. These will also provide a template for use by organisations and consultants developing the EIA reports.

Marginalized communities are excluded from a say in the creation of policies. 

The paper dwells on the likely changes that climate change is expected to bring in temperature, precipitation and extreme rainfall, drought, river and inland flooding, storms/storm surges/coastal flooding, sea-level rise and environmental health risks, and who within urban populations will be at risk.

The HKH region is one of the most dynamic, fragile, and complex mountain systems in the world as a result of tectonic activity and the rich diversity of climates, hydrology, and ecology. The high Himalayan region is the freshwater tower of South Asia and has the highest concentration of snow and glaciers outside the polar regions giving it the name Third Pole.

Balati glacier, Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand (Source: Uttarakhand and I)

This has been a generic first attempt that can be fine-tuned and customised for each type of ecosystem and each kind of service value. Ecosystem services are defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment as ‘the benefits people obtain from ecosystems'.

Mountains occupy 24% of the global land surface area and are home to 12% of the world’s population. Mountains have an ecological, aesthetic, and socioeconomic significance, not only for those living in the mountain areas, but also for people living beyond them. However, the importance of ecosystem services arising from mountains is not properly recognised. The HKH region is endowed with a rich variety of gene pools and species, and ecosystems of global importance. It is a storehouse of biological diversity and a priority region in many global conservation agendas. The region has many unique ecosystems that play a critical role in protecting the environment and in providing livelihoods for much of Asia and beyond.

A workshop on ‘Understanding and resolving water conflicts in the North East India', was organized by Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India (Forum), in collaboration with Aaranyak (Guwahati), Centre for the Environment, IIT (Guwahati), Arghyam (Bangalore), SaciWATERs-CapNet Network (SCaN) and Cap-Net to discuss emerging issues related to water conflicts and their resolution in the region. This workshop was held in Guwahati on January 23-26, 2012. It aimed at presenting concepts and theory related water conflicts as well as issues especially relevant to the North East Region.

Guest post by: Raju Mimi

The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region has had very few resources to develop a detail scientific understanding needed to assess climatological, environmental, and other data in the past and there is very little information upon which a baseline for comparison with the present can be formed and future impacts can be anticipated.

It includes the present and planned water utilisation across sectors and uses, within a framework of environment, conservation and sustainability. It also examined the present institutional arrangements for water resources management and assessed the requirements for institutional development, improvement in data collection and analysis, catchment and agriculture planning, and other reforms required to ensure sustainable water resources management.