Shimla Collective to host Shimla Climate meet 

Shimla Collective will host a Shimla Climate Meet taking place from March 19 to -21, 2024 on the theme of  Northwest Town Himalayan  “Climate Change, Impacts, and Challenges.

Addressing a press conference here today Former Deputy Mayor Tekinder Panwar, Environment activists Himanshu Sood, Ashok Kumar Captain MS Bullar. Uma Mahajan, former Counsellor Mala Singh, and Reveen Singh said that the Shimla climate meet 19 to 21 march and its 2nd phase would also held next month.

The former Deputy Mayor said that the IPCC report is likely to be published soon however all the stakeholders comprised under the banner of Shimla collective huddle in Shimla to create awareness among the masses including students citizens and various mass organizations and working classes including common citizens during the community-based campaign.

The Shimla Climate Meet (SCM) is being organized in the background of the incessant disasters taking place in the Himalayan region, particularly the concerns raised after the recent flooding in the state of Himachal Pradesh.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) VI report has categorically pointed out that the two most vulnerable zones in the Indian subcontinent are: Coastal Indian and the Himalayan Region The Indian  Himalayan Region (IHR) comprises 11 states and two union territories. 

“The  IPCC report states that in the years to come because of climate change owing to anthropogenic reasons, there is going to be a massive change in weather patterns like less snow, more rainfall in shorter periods frequency of extreme weather events will increase phenomenally high and the worst forms of disasters experienced in the history of once in a century should be dozens and scores in the given period. 

The meeting will also discuss the lessons to be learned from the disasters in the Himalayan Region and discuss the measures of mitigation and adaptive strategies.

The Simla Collective would launch this campaign through street plays, the first one being held at Naaz on February 22, 2024, followed by many such performances in the town.

 There shall be various dissemination campaigns including reaching out to school and college students and engaging them in healthy discussions about their understanding and ambition of climate change and how do they look at their futures in the given challenges. Competitions on poster making, slogan creating and other innovative ideas, both physical and online to be organized.

During the meeting experts of the Northwest Himalayan region would try to build a strategy for mitigation and climate change in the three states including Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir.

He said that keeping the experience of extreme rain flash floods cloudbursts and landslide events that occurred during last year’s Monsoon season the Shimla climate meet has a lot of influence.

He said that the imminent challenge before the people today is to avert the human activities promoting climate change like carbon emissions and scientific utilisation of natural resources and sustainable development if the above issues are not addressed properly people of Himachal like the Pastoral community small farmers, informal sector and tourism are expected to impacted adversely.

The collective apart from influencing the policy on climate change successfully persuaded the authorities to cut down the use of Flax mostly used in urban areas.

It would try to advocate the use of construction materials that would be environmentally friendly Besides this it also has to face undounting tasks like building a narrative to Stop the development of the town on the land use basis as designed under the Shimla Development Plan.

He said that Shimla is likely to lose the existing aesthetics of construction as Gothic, Tudor, and Kathkutin-style construction is valued as the most suitable alternative for construction.

He said that major challenges before Shimla town are likely to be withering hills and landslides-prone topology and a vector epidemic if climate change is successfully not dealt.

He said that the Shimla collective are umbrella body of people who are working in diverse fields on environment and SCM, and is not limited to Shimla town, rather the delegates representing different social, environmental, and peoples’ movements, and other groups and experts in the field of science, environment, building, architects and planners, pastoralists, and so on will assemble. 

He said that broad consensus would be brought among the local group of stakeholders so that a sustainable development model would be devlop to face ecosystem challenges and the impact of climate change as the state faced in the recent past.

The  SCM will be organized by Action Aid  India and “Simla Collective”, an open group comprising different sections of the society in the town with ecological and environmental concerns and bonds.