Saturday, January 13, 2018

STH Activity : Seminar on 'Development paradigm in the Mountains : a case study of Darjeeling and Kalimopng districts' (09Jan2018)

Referring our earlier blog
Some of the key take-aways from the seminar are :-
  • Small towns and hamlets in the districts are urbanizing at a phenomenal rate, often in an unplanned manner.
  • As they do so, the industries viz educational vocations, tourism, construction which are replacing traditional means of livelihood (main agro-based work) are more vulnerable to disaster.
  • The study clearly showed the huge growth of human settlements and expansion of the developmental activities (such as road construction) along steep slopes or in the vicinity of landslide areas which results in a net increase of disaster risk in these regions.
  • There is a need for landslide hazard zonation maps where available to be made public and easily accessible so as to incorporate this into the planning process.
  • In the final analysis, there is an urgent need to better manage development activities in the mountains to reduce disaster risk.
Praful Rao,
Kalimpong District,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

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