The Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) has opened a facility here to discuss and share the best practices in climate change mitigation programmes.
The facility was opened on Wednesday on the sidelines of the 34th CIRDAP technical committee meeting, being held at the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (NIRDPR).
Delegates from 15 member-countries, with a combined population of 255 crore people, are attending the conference. The CIRDAP is a regional, inter-governmental and autonomous organisation.
This is the third time that India is hosting the CIRDAP technical committee meeting. The previous technical committee meeting was held in Fiji.
“This represents 34 per cent of global population. We, with our activities, will be impacting a combined rural population of 154 crore people in CIRDAP member-countries,” Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister of Rural Development, Agriculture Farmers Welfare and Panchayati Raj, said in a message from Delhi.
“From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale,” a delegate attending the conference said.
“Without drastic action now, adapting to these impacts in the future will be difficult and costly,” he felt.
The conference discusses climate change, and adoption of mitigation strategies by CIRDAP member-countries. “It aims at exchanging knowledge on awareness creation of climate change and its consequences among the communities. The delegates will also discuss capacity building programmes on climate change and mitigation,” WR Reddy, Director-General of NIRDPR , said.
The virtual room
He earlier launched ‘A-View’, a video conference application that lets State rural development institutes disseminate information on climate change adoption. Using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies, the IT solution can assess the learning levels among the participants.