Mahila Housing Trust (MHT), on the occasion of its silver jubilee is organizing a Webinar Series: Responsible Urbanization through Women’s participation.The webinar series will bring together activists, grass-roots women, policy makers. researchers, international organisations and many others to discuss and debate about making cities more people friendly and especially gender friendly.
Under the Webinar Series, the fourth Webinar was organised on:
CLIMATE CHANGE, ENERGY AND URBAN RESILIENCE | February 24
India’s increasing urbanization, is increasing the inequities and now intersects with significant shifts in climate variables projected for the 21st century. According to the Global Climate Risk Index of 2020, India is the fifth most vulnerable of 181 countries to the effects of climate change, with its poorest being the most at risk. This threatens to thwart the gains made in social and economic infrastructure. Cities will have to cope with unprecedented demand for critical resources like food, water, energy, while mitigating and adapting to climate change. These impacts are already visible in terms of extreme weather and climate events, environmental degradation and rapid depletion of resources. India saw 73 spells of heat waves in 2019 (Down-to-earth, 2019). In the same year, air pollution levels in several cities soared to hazard our levels. Depleting water levels and deteriorating water quality are also emerging as major concerns.
It is therefore imperative that actions on all three fronts, Mitigation, Adaptation and Resilience Building of communities, towards climate change, be undertaken simultaneously. MHT has developed models on women led action on climate induced stresses like heat stress, water management, flooding and vector borne diseases that have been recognized worldwide.
The webinar of the MHT Webinar Series focuses on the following Key Question: What are the major initiatives that are needed to be undertaken with the poor, on all three fronts, mitigation, adaptation and resilience building, so that the impact of climate change can be minimized on the most vulnerable population?
OBJECTIVES OF THE WEBINAR:
-To share the good practices on mitigation, adaptation and resilience building towards impact of climate change, on poor.
-To understand the efforts at the level of policy, and advocacy being undertaken, towards the same.
-To bring in the national/International experiences to the fore on the issue.
This Webinar was moderated by Rajeswari Namagiri Gorana, Independent Consultant , Education for Sustainable Development Sector .
Panelists:
1. Edel Monteiro , Program Lead, India Climate Collaborative
2.Nirmita Chandrashekar, Program Manager – Built Environment
SELCO Foundation
3.Xiaoyi Jin, Head of Access to Cooling, Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP), ClimateWorks Foundation
4. Bhavna Maheriya, Programme Manager, Mahila Housing Trust
source
