STH activities in early Jun2023.

03Jun2023

Commencing 02Jun2023, four IIT (Mandi) students are interning with SaveTheHills for around a month, so our activities have been interwoven with their training schedule.
For their benefit as well as for the students of Cluny Women's College, Kalimpong, we asked renowned academic Prof Sarah Besky of Cornell University (who was Kalimpong for her own research work) to talk about the 'Impact of tourism on Rural Communities'

05Jun2023: World Environment Day (Theme: Solutions to Plastic Pollution)

Along with AIWC (Kalimpong Branch) we organized an awareness program in DISHA Center, Kalimpong:

 

 

07Jun2023: Study tour to the NHPC's Teesta Low Dam Project III with 11 students (of IIT - Mandi and Siliguri College)

My thanks to Prof Besky, Cluny Women's College, AIWC (Kalimpong) and NHPC for making the events memorable.

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling Sikkim Himalaya
savethehills@gmail.com
9475033744

Good news for us: Landslide Early Warning Systems (LEWS) get a boost

BBC recently came up with this article on LEWS:

Rather coincidentally, almost a year and a half ago we had the same team from IIT Mandi at Darjeeling for Darjeeling Himalaya Initiative's (DHI) 'Call of the Mountains' event (below)

STH has remained in touch with the IIT Mandi team and hopes that before the next monsoons a few of the LEWS sensors will be in place in some landslide prone areas of the Darjeeling -Sikkim Himalayas.
In this regard, I am glad to report that interest on Landslides as a major disaster form has grown in the country and the world over and we know of a number of institutes and technologies now working on LEWS.
To name a few:
     * Project LANDSLIP working on developing a regional landslide EW system in the Darjeeling and Nilgiris region of India.
     * IIT Indore working in the CHIBO-PASHYOR area of Kalimpong on sensor based EW system.
     * GSI on community based landslide early warning system in Giddey (Kurseong). 
     * Amrita University on LEWS in East Sikkim.
     * LHASA system in Rio.
All in all, good news for us who live in landslide prone regions of the world.

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya