CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is mapping the areas across the state, which are vulnerable to climate change by collating data and feeding it in a Tamil Nadu State Climate Change Knowledge Management Portal.
The initiative launched now is part of the National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change (NMSKCC) which seeks to build a vibrant and dynamic knowledge system that would inform and support national action for responding effectively to the objective of ecologically sustainable development.
The NMSKCC has been launched with the objectives of mapping the knowledge and data resources relevant to climate change and positioning of a data sharing policy framework for building strategic knowledge among the various arms of the government.
Under the initiative, an NMSKCC cell has to be created at the State-level, wherein all knowledge generated will be made available to the relevant state machinery. “Without a credible data-sharing mechanism, building strategic knowledge on climate change is virtually impossible. A necessary pre-condition for the NMSKCC is a bench-marked data collection and sharing system aided by appropriate high bandwidth hardware infrastructure to network knowledge bodies in the strategic knowledge framework,” the source said.
Official sources told Express that the initiative was being implemented by the department of Environment in collaboration with the Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research, Anna University, Chennai and the project was being funded by the Department of Science and Technology.The sources said that data were being sought from all state government agencies. The data includes district-wise waste generation, urban sanitation, drinking water in urban areas, status of water-borne diseases (diarhoea, cholera and typhoid), vector-borne diseases (dengue and malaria) and air-borne disease (asthma, bronchitis).
The information on death rate due to water and airborne diseases will also be collated and added in the portal along with data on availability of drinking water in urban areas.
In short
The NMSKCC seeks to build a dynamic and vibrant knowledge system that informs and supports national policy and action for responding effectively to climate change challenges.
The Mission, approved in July 2010, was envisaged as a support Mission, for generating and providing strategic knowledge to the other seven Missions under the National Action Plan for Climate Change (NAPCC).
Under this Mission, several states including Tamil Nadu have to create a portal mapping vulnerable areas due to climate change.
The project is funded by the Department of Science and Technology. Each state is funded with `5 crore to build the infrastructure for the project.