Mountain communities in India discuss climate

The Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA) in partnership with Climate Development and Knowledge Network (CDKN), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Government of Uttarakhand organized an outreach event in Dehradun, capital of the state of Uttarakhand in northern India, about the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report on 10-1 March 2015. CDKN has an ongoing partnership with the IPCC to promote the uptake of the IPCC’s  findings with developing country governments around the world. In India a successful national outreach was organized in 2014, utilizing a regional summary of the assessment report titled ‘What’s in it for South Asia’.

Taking this to the next level and trying to reach new audiences at sub-national level, the Uttarakhand  outreach initiative was held in Dehradun, involving two main events: 

• High-level public event with Dr Youba Sokona, IPCC Co-chair Working Group III as well as Coordinator of African Climate Policy Centre, and IPCC authors Prof Govindasamy Bala, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, and Dr Akhilesh Surjan, Kyoto University, which drew out the main findings of the report relevant for Uttarakhand. In the presence of Govind Singh Kunjwal, Speaker of the Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly; Dinesh Agarwal, Minister Forests and Environment, Uttarakhand Government; and N. Ravi Shanker, Chief Secretary, Uttarakhand, the event brought emerging concern for the Himalayan state and useful information for the Government and stakeholders. 

• University interaction with the IPCC authors was organized on 11 March 2015. This was an opportunity for local students and researchers to interact and ask IPCC authors questions about the Fifth Assessment Report. The authors provided overviews of Working Group reports. Prof ANil K. Gupta, Director of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, who also contributed as a reviewer of the Fifth Assessment Report, shared an historic account of environment protection in India. Mihir Bhatt, Senior Advisor of CDKN, provided the rationale for sharing the report with university students.
  
  

Dr Pushkin Phartiyal, Executive Director of CHEA, says the outreach events were an excellent opportunity to establish dialogue between policy and science. Participation of senior political leaders, administrators, academicians and media in the High Level Public Dialogue and active presence of more than 250 researchers as well as university students at the University Outreach further underlines of importance of sharing of the assessment report findings at sub-national level.

The major recommendations of the event included more IPCC-type robust studies for specific geographies such as Himalayan Region; Sub-national/state universities, research institutions, civil society, tiers of government and communities (TK/IK) collaborating in innovative ways to clearly understand ad-hoc adaptation, mal-adaptation as well as smart-adaptation; Up-scaling ongoing pilot projects having successful results; and synergy among actors across scales and disciplines.

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Photos and news by Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA)