Climate Change in Nagaland’s path

Kohima : Undoubtedly, the Nagaland government’s effort to frame an action plan against Climate Change by April 2011 in line with the National Action Plan on Climate Change is a step in the right direction. It is so especially for the fact that there have been many talking points through seminars, workshops or conclaves on the need to draw a common goal to combat climate change and foster sustainable development. At the grass root level also, efforts are on to restrict hunting and burning of jungles by almost all the village councils in the state.
In 2010, Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio assured the assembly session that the DAN government was committed to addressing Climate Change ‘to preserve the environment’ while enabling grass-root level institutions and communities to facilitate ‘green governance’.
While saying that the state faces numerous Climatic Change challenges that require strong redress: These redress require appropriate decision-making and government regulations that integrate land use planning to economic development, public health, transportation and better education system that encourage and strengthen community partnership in developmental decisions. 
Further, Rio said the DAN government was committed to playing a key role in encouraging and promoting ‘green buildings’, energy efficiency and development of renewable energy to higher levels, and to ultimately lead the state towards energy sufficiency. 
A German development bank (Reconstruction Credit Institute - KfW) and Nagaland government have signed an agreement to raise adaptive capacity of the rural people in the face of Climate Change.  It is likely to take off by early 2012 and intends to enhance the resilience and adaptive capacity of rural people in Nagaland. 
Although there has been no significant research on Climatic Change in Nagaland, interactions with local farmers suggested a marked change in the climatic pattern affecting the agricultural calendar, a paper published by the state’s Department of Forest, Ecology, Environment and Wildlife said. The paper noted that there were indications of a significant rise in the occurrence of summer-borne diseases as well as an increased occurrence of pests such as mosquitoes at higher altitudes than was found earlier. Climate change might be the reason for these occurrences in the state, the paper said.
Pointing to burning of fossil fuel in vehicles, the biggest contributor to Global Warming at individual level everywhere, the paper urged for reducing fuel consumption by encouraging citizens to use bicycles for short distances or use public transport or even ‘carpool’.
The department paper also suggested that people plant trees to trap and fix carbon to the ground and prevent it from damaging the atmosphere. It suggested that citizens make sure that garbage was segregated into biodegradable and non-biodegradable, collected regularly and disposed in a correct manner.
Climate change poses an emerging challenge to sustainability of social and economic development; livelihoods of communities and environment management in developing countries, said a framework for the preparation of the action plan on climate change. 
The framework said that the impacts of climate change in India are expected to be a significant. India is considered highly vulnerable of climate change, not only because of high physical exposure to climate-related disasters (65 % of India is drought prone, 12% flood prone and 8% susceptible to cyclones), but also because of dependency of its economy and majority of population on climate- sensitive sectors (e.g. agriculture, forests, tourism, animal husbandry and fisheries).
It also stated that climate change is expected to increase relative stress on water resource due to the decline in rainfall with impact on water availability and agriculture/ food security (60% crop area in India is under rain-fed agriculture).
India has released its National Action Plan on Climate Change in 2008 as a part of these ambitions domestic actions to address climate change. The action plan also designed to achieve sustainable development with co benefit in terms of climate change. The framework also stated that with the central government remains a key actor in shaping the climate change policy and creating the necessary institutional mechanism for its implementation, involving of the state government in tackling climate change is crucial.

Source : http://www.morungexpress.com