GUWAHATI, Nov 19: Experts at an international conference on sustainable development underlined the need for the scientific community to explore ways towards a nature-driven, ecologically sustainable approach to urban development.
“Environmental degradation is known to all. However, we hardly do anything about it. If we don’t take responsibility of our mother earth, one day this earth is destined to be doomed,” stated Prof. Arup Kumar Sarma from the department of civil engineering, IIT Guwahati during the inaugural session of the International Earth Science Conference 2022 on ‘Sustainable Development: Challenges and the Way Forward’, at the University of Science and Technology Meghalaya (USTM) on Friday.
The two-day conference is being organised by the Department of Earth Science, USTM, in collaboration with the Department of Environmental Science, Tezpur University.
Delivering the keynote address, Prof. Sarma said that urbanisation is an ecological disturbance that the modern world accepts as essential in the absence of a better alternative that could provide an equal level of comfort.
“Urbanisation need not be an unfortunate reality built against nature. The approach to such development has to be unique and nature driven,” he said.
“The scientific community is, therefore, searching for ways towards ecologically sustainable urban development,” he added.
A souvenir and book of abstracts was also released by the dignitaries during the programme.
Addressing the conference, Prof. Basant Maheswari, an expert, said that complex problems often require simple solutions.
“This is very much true for groundwater management. Communication about what is happening, what can be done and how it can be done is the key with a common pool and invisible resource such as groundwater.
“We need to develop and simplify groundwater science that can be used by farmers and implemented by government agencies,” he said.
He also said that to succeed, solutions need to start with people, and groundwater scarcity is a problem related to people’s greed, invisibility and lack of understanding.
Addressing the conference as chief guest, Prof. Narendra S Chaudhari, vice-chancellor of Assam Science and Technology University (ASTU), said that the Tocklai Tea Research Institute in Jorhat documented 3,00,000 insects in the eastern Assam during the British period but in a recent survey by AASTU it was found that 90 per cent of the insects are now extinct.
“This no doubt reflects a serious ecological imbalance,” he said.
Speaking on the occasion, Prof. GD Sharma, vice-chancellor of USTM, said that in the past two decades, natural resources have decreased alarmingly, creating new challenges, affecting climate change and global warming.
“Imbalanced environmental degradation is causing many diseases on earth,” he said.
