‘World must unite to tackle climatic vagaries’

A UGC-sponsored workshop on global warming was held at the Khariar Autonomous College of Nuapada district on Thursday.

Hundreds of students and teachers of the college as well as intellectuals of Khariar town attended the workshop. The workshop was divided in to two sessions – the first session was the inaugural session, which was chaired by Principal of the college Dr Supriya Chatterjee. Prof Dr HK Panda of Economics department presented about the objective of the workshop briefly. Dr Chaterjee and C Chandrakar of the Physics department also spoke.

The second session was a technical session chaired by retired bureaucrat Shrikant Chatterjee. The speakers in the session included Ranjan Panda of Water Initiatives, Odisha, Dr Manjit of Delhi University, Prof Dr Sudarshan Panigrahi and Prof Padmalochan Barma.

“The globe has reached to a critical state due to global warming. The problems we are experiencing like the frequent droughts, flood and cyclone, patchy rainfall in a limited area or heavy rainfall in a short duration of time are the symptoms of a change in the climate situation. The temperature in the globe is increasing continuously.

There are natural causes of increase in temperature of the globe, but we have experienced that, the temperature has increased abnormally after the industrialisation. Carbon pollution caused by burning of fossil fuels for power generation, transport and production of cement are three main contributors of carbon in the atmosphere. We have always tried to address this problem through technological interventions seeing at the problem in a fragmented and isolated way.

Resolutions taken by the different climate conventions thus have not materialized to reduce the carbon foot prints in the globe. There has to be a total reversal in the approach; we have to understand who is suffering the most at the cost of whom. How the climate change has affected the common men can best be seen from the plight of the people of Satabhaya in Kendrapada who are victims of sea erosion. Kalahandi and Nuapada have been witnessing the vagaries of recurring drought,” said the speakers, calling for greater awareness and concerted action.