The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Shri 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.

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