Vigyana Bharathi Held Workshop To Garner India-centric Views For Upcoming Habitat III Global Summit

Vigyana Bharathi, an NGO, has organised a national  workshop on 'Sustainable Development of Coastal Habitats in India' at Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad, on August 29 - 30, 2016.  

This two day workshop was  aimed at bringing various agencies and experts from different fields related to habitat and climate change on one platform to discuss holistically about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), climate change and India’s response for Habitat III, an upcoming  global summit to be held in Quito, Ecuador on 17-20 October 2016.

Sri Jayanth Sahasra Buddhe, national secretary of Vigyana Bharathi, has explained the back ground of this conference and further actions that the contemporary global thinking about how human settlements has influenced to a great extent by development in last two years.

He said a major shift was seen in the year 2015 as it marked the expiry of previously held Millennium Development Goals set up by United Nations and a new set of aspirational goals, popularly known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted.  Further, the year also witnessed crucial Paris Agreement on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP 21) that is  now put into  action. 

He further added that besides to this, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-30 has also set the tone for building the resilience of nations and communities to disasters. In principle, these developments are interlinked and sure to shape all global summits in days to come.

                                                 

Incidentally the third ‘United Nations Conference on Housing and Human Settlements’ or Habitat III will be the first major global summit post SDGs, Paris agreement and Sendai framework. It is scheduled to take place in Ecuador for three days during October 17-20, 2016. 

At Habitat III, the international community is likely to agree upon the ‘New Urban Agenda’ and that outcome document will lay the ground work for policies and approaches that will extend and impact into the future. Every member state of UN-Habitat has contributed towards shaping the new urban agenda through their ‘Country Response’. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA) will represent India at Habitat III and is mandated to present our ‘Country-response’.

Vigyana Bharati through its initiative of ‘Habitat Lab’ observed that streamlining the ‘Country response’ with‘India-centric implementation of SDGs and Climate Actions’ is a steep challenge. It believes that it can be met only through bringing multiple stakeholders and different agencies of government on one platform.

The conference concluded with remarks made by Sri Dr Saraswat, member of Niti Ayog, stressing on the need of eliminating gray areas of blue economy and need for prioritisation of essential needs of coastal belts for an effective human habitats.

The two day workshop was attended by Dr Saraswat, Sri Sathish Shenoy,  director at INCOIS, Sri Vivek Pai, secretery of Vigyana Bharathi, Mayuresh, research officer at Habitat Lab, Mumbai and scientists working in INCOIS, IIT Hyderabad, Ocean studies also participated.