Public Talk On Uttarakhand Disaster: Can The Nation Learn Any Lessons?
By Himanshu Thakkar
22 August 2013 ;
Time: 5.00 pm – 7.30 pm ;
Venue: Ashirwad, St. Mark’s Road, Bangalore
Downloads:
Invitation for the Public talk and the Speakers profile
Environment Support Group invites you to a Public talk
On
Uttarakhand Disaster:
Can the Nation learn any lessons?
By
Himanshu Thakkar
On Thursday, the 22nd of August 2013, At Ashirwad, Between 5.00pm -7.30 pm
Tea/Coffee: 4.30 pm
Background:
Uttarakhand disaster of June 2013 has thrown up a lot of questions. On vulnerabilities of different regions. On Environmental Governance and how it takes or does not take into account vulnerabilities. How the interventions in the name of development impact the disaster potential of a given area. What role disaster preparedness, warning, forecasting, information dissemination, mitigation and management should and does play in our decision making processes. Do we even have credible disaster management mechanism in place? How does our environment impact assessments, environment appraisal committees and environment ministry consider these issues? Do we have credible cumulative impact assessment, carrying capacity studies at river basin level in a place like Uttarakhand where the state aspires to be Urja Pradesh, egged on by the centre and hydropower lobby? What space rivers need to flow and what we need to ensure that the beauty (the river) does not become beast (disaster)? What sort of accountability and participatory norms we have? Does our environmental governance institutes have capacity learn from such events? What is our track record in this regard?
These are some of the many questions that arise from the horrific Uttarakhand disaster. South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People is one of the many organisations that is active on environmental governance in general on rivers in particular, including in Uttarakhand. Himanshu Thakkar from SANDRP would be visiting Bangalore and has agreed to meet some of us and discuss these issues. Hope you will be interested. To see some of SANDRP’s relevant work, see: http://sandrp.wordpress.com/ and http://sandrp.in/.
About the speaker:
Himanshu Thakkar, educated as an engineer from Indian Institute of Technology (Mumbai), is currently coordinator of South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers & People (SANDRP) and editor of magazine “Dams, Rivers & People”. SANDRP is an informal network of organizations and individuals working on issues related with water sector with special focus on issues associated with large dams, mostly in India, but including South Asia regional issues. He has been formerly associated with the work of the World Commission on Dams, Centre for Science and Environment and Save Narmada Movement. Mr. Thakkar believes that trans boundary water issues in South Asia and Central Asia can have lessons for each other, since climate change will affect them all.
Organised By:
Environment Support Group® – Trust
1572, 36th Cross, 100 Feet Ring Road, Banashankari II Stage, Bangalore 560070. INDIA
Tel: 91-80-26713559-3561Voice/Fax: 91-80-26713316 Email: [email protected] Web: www.esgindia.org
To Register please email [email protected]
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