The International Conference on Climate Change Innovation and Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood

Short Report

on

"The International Conference on Climate Change Innovation and Resilience for Sustainable Livelihood"

Photograph 1: TIRI Scholars attending the international conference

Duration and Time: The three days international conference was held in Kathmandu on January 12-14, 2015 at Hotel Solatee.

Focus Area: Most of presentations including both oral and posters are mainly focused on the climate change and its impact on human and livestocks. Few papers were also presented on gender analysis and disaster prediction and management. However in most of the papers, climate change data is primarily focused.

TIRI Participants: TIRI scholars actively participated in the conference by presenting their works by both oral and poster presentations.

Experience gained in the conference: Truly speaking, the conference was found to be really informative for me and all other TIRI scholars as well. While interacting in oral and poster presentations with the researchers, I found something lacking in the researches. They had showed the data regarding climate change and its impacts to vulnerable people and their livestock. In many cases, what I observed is they missed to show their research impacts. We all know that poor people are the most susceptible group of climate change which is obvious. When there is significant decrease in environmental temperature, of course people who have no warm clothes will be more affected but those who are living in ac homes will be less affected. I feel that it will be better if people also focus on how to minimize the impacts of climate change on those vulnerable people which will be the really good researches.

Similarly, few works presented on gender studies as well. I could remember one research in which he has presented a data of peoples' involvement on farming. He did such researches previously too. He found that over 80% women involved in farming however men just spent their time on playing cards. Every year there is only slight changes in the pattern. If it is the condition then what is the significance of such studies.  What I understood is research has direct and quick role on development. If our researches are not changing the thinking of people and benefitting them, then it is not said to be a research. With time people think differently, but our research should able to change their thinking very quickly to positive attitude. Our research seems effective if equal number of men and women are found to be working on farm in our next visit.

Another thing I felt lacking in our researches is the technology. Our technologies are still very classical on climate change study and prediction of possible upcoming disaster. Due to lack of advanced technologies, people of developing countries are becoming victims of natural disasters. The only possible solution of minimizing losses due to climate change is education and technology transfer from developed country to developing one.  It is a demand of today.

Moreover, the previous climatic data of Nepal is not found so we couldn't correlate our one year data with the previous one. Similar problem I found in the presentations of other Nepali researchers as well.

Conclusion: In conclusion, the conference was really fruitful. The climate change impacts are really a big problem. In order to overcome of this problem, all countries in the world should work together and share their knowledge in such conferences.

Acknowledgement:  I would like to thank all the organizer teams for organizing such an informative conference. And I specially thank to Colorado State University and Research team (Dr. Diana, Dr. Katie and Dr. Bowen) for proving such a golden opportunity to gain knowledge on climate change and its impact.