On the theme “Increasing resilience to environmental hazards in border conflict zones”, two days long international workshop on research and practice in Ladakh and across the Hindu Kush -Himalaya was held on July 10 at Grand Dragon Hotel, Leh. 

The workshop was organised by the Institute for Energy Research and Training (IERT), Postgraduate Department of Geology, University of Jammu, and Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR), University College London (UCL).

Focusing on building resilience in frontier conflict zones subjected to multiple environmental hazards, the workshop was inaugurated by Prof. R.D Sharma, Vice-Chancellor, University of Jammu.

Prof. R. D. Sharma, Vice-Chancellor, University of Jammu said, “It is an international conference on the resilience of the people in the light of different kind of hazard causing lots of damage to the society. The researchers from a different part of worlds such as Bhutan, USA, UK, Bangladesh etc and researchers from Jammu University came to visit and research in Ladakh. They are visiting different areas and contacting the local people, observing their living styles and difficulties and miseries they are passing through.”

The workshop was divided into three sessions in which the researchers and professors presented their reports and researches on different topics.

Giving an overview of the potential physical hazards in the region, Prof. G. M. Bhat, University of Jammu, IERT said, “We have chosen the Nubra Valley as a model to collect the data about the disaster in the past. Our team comprises of different specialities, including a geologist, scientist, engineers, historians etc. We have been in Nubra valley from past two weeks, and interacted with the cross section of the people including the school children.”

“As awareness is the 50% of mitigating the hazards, a  two days training was also imparted to the students of all schools in Nubra to make them resilience and aware of such disaster’’ he added.

He further added that one of the striking examples of natural disaster is the destruction of Tsati village, which was comprised of 100 households in 1927. The village was devastated by flood and wiped out all the population. Now it is again coming out to the normal population of 30 households.

A panel discussion on hazard and resilience was also held. The workshop was attended by the invited speakers and other delegates from India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, France, Germany, Italy, Nepal, Spain, the UK and the USA.