New Delhi – Navdanya and Core Group for Tibetan Cause, India jointly organized a discussion on ‘Water and Climate Change’ at IIC Annexe, New Delhi on 16 June 2010.
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 honorary 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.
The discussion started with the welcome and introductory note by Dr. Nand Kishore Trikha, National Convener of Core Group for Tibetan Cause.
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 Zansker 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 damming 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 climatologist, Glaciologists, meteorologist.
Mr. Vijay Kranti, through his pictorial presentation on Tibet, iterated that the massive population transfer in Tibet leads to the ecological disturbances inside Tibet. Tenzin Norbu stressed on damming, melting of the permafrost in Tibet and global warming. He warned that, with the rise of the temperature in Tibet, the permafrost melts, which resulted in an irreversible damage to the Tibet’s ecosystem.
