The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy inaugurated the 1st International Conference on “Landslides Risk Reduction and Resilience" here today.While addressing the Conference, MoS, Shri G. kishan Reddy called for developing technology to anticipate disasters like landslides and develop infrastructure to quickly respond to minimise the damage. The Minister said that landslides have attracted global attention as they may cause huge havoc on communities, live stock, environment leading to huge loss of lives . On the one hand landslides effect loss of infrastructures-roads, buildings, bridges, communication systems etc, on the other, they may lead to stagnation of human activity and mobility, he added . He further said that landslides can destroy the structures of our culture and heritage and erase the cultural and historical identities of the people.Shri Reddy said that although landslides are a natural calamity but of late, our life styles, our greed and irresponsible planning along with global warming and climate change are also contributing to them and the damage there of. The Minister further said that we must realise that landslides pose a serious challenge for us in our march towards progress and prosperity and disrupt the ecological balance.While mentioning about the Government initiatives to make India disaster-resilient and to reduce landslide loses, the Minister said that since the adoption of the Disaster Management Act 2005, the Government has taken a number of initiatives to strengthen the resilience capacity of all the stakeholders at different levels.
He said that our experience shows that the above initiatives could help us only to an extent. But for us to become a Disaster Resilient Nation, we still need to go a long way and It is in this context, conferences such as these would prove extremely beneficial, the Minister added.The Minister while congratulating the National Institute of Disaster management (NIDM) for organizing the first of its kind conference in the country, called for making extensive collaborative programs involving international community and all the stakeholders at national, state and regional levels to tackle the problem. He expressed hope that deliberations in this conference will go a long way in finding long term solutions to natural disasters.The Executive Director, NIDM, Major General Manoj Kumar Bindal, Member Seceretry, NDMA, Shri G.V.V Sarma, Shri Sanjeev K. Jindal, Joint Secretary (MHA) and members of NDMA and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion.Apart from this, the scientist, engineer, technologists, planners, developers, administrators, policy and decision makers from different States of the country as well as other from countries participated and shared their views during the conference. More than 50 Knowledge partners including International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), ITC Netherlands, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (UN ESCAP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), International Association for Promoting Geo-ethics (IAPG), International Geographical Union (IGU), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs), Geological Survey of India (GSI), CSIR, IITs, Universities, UGC, AICTE, Revenue and Disaster Management departments, Prasar Bharti and many other relevant stakeholders supported NIDM in organizing this international event.