The
Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change (Independent
Charge),
Shri
Prakash Javadekar delivering the presidential address at the workshop
The Minister
also distributed the award of the best State ENVIS centre to Forests,
Environment & Wildlife Management Department, Sikkim and the award for the
best Thematic ENVIS Centre to Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Shri
Javadekar also released knowledge products of ENVIS Centres including – an ENVIS
Bulletin on ‘Ecology and Management of Grassland Habitats in India’ by WII
ENVIS Centre, a book on ‘State at a Glance: Jammu & Kashmir’ Vol(1) 3, 2015
by GB Pant ENVIS Centre, a book on ‘Ecological Traditions of India - Gujarat -
Vol. XI’ by CPREEC ENVIS Centre and a Compendium on "Environment in the
Indian Parliament: 2011-2015" (CD format) by WWF ENVIS Centre. The
Minister also released mobile applications, including an ENVIS App (2.2
Version) on medicinal plants by neighbourhood App (0.4.0 version) on common
medicinal plants of Bengaluru City by FRLHT ENVIS Centre, economic algal material,
important fungi and their applications, important bacteria and their applications
- Android App by ENVIS Centre, Kalyani University.
The Minister of State for Environment, Forest and
Climate Change (Independent Charge), Shri Prakash Javadekar presented the
best ENVIS centre awards
Speaking
on the occasion, Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change,
Shri Ashok Lavasa, said that people in India have always had a spiritual belief
in nature. The Secretary underlined the need to make ENVIS more relevant by providing
an analytical database to enable and assist well-informed decision making. Shri
Lavasa added that the Ministry wants to create a vibrant network and associate
all research organisations, institutions and NGOs working in the field of
environment. He also underlined the need to involve more people in
environment, particularly in the field of waste management.
Environmental Information System (ENVIS) Portal - http://envis.nic.in,
a
new initiative, runs parallel with the Digital
India Objective, which works on improving the digital literacy in the environment
sector and deliver services digitally all over the country. The digitization
of valuable data covering the broad spectrum of subjects on environment will
serve as an asset in generating feature rich repository of information. Bringing
all ENVIS Centres under one roof will also facilitate convergence in data
dissemination.
Environmental
Information System (ENVIS), a Central Sector Scheme of the Ministry has been implemented
since 1982. The purpose of the scheme is to integrate country-wide efforts in
environmental information collection, collation, storage, retrieval and
dissemination through ENVIS websites, which are dedicated to different
interesting themes. The network presently consists of 69 Centres, of which 29
are hosted by the environment/forest department of State governments/UT
Administrations and deal with “State of the environment and
related issues”, while 40 Centres are being hosted
by environment-related governmental and non-governmental organisations/institutes
of professional excellence and have a thematic mandate. Major
users of ENVIS include Central and State Governments, institutes and individual
scientists, researchers, students and agencies carrying out environmental
impact assessment of projects, as well as public.
The
workshop will evaluate and assess the functioning of the 69 ENVIS Centres. It
will consider their continuance based on their performance and also provide
them the necessary guidance and training in performing their activities to meet
the objectives of the ENVIS scheme. This is the first time
that the national workshop has been organised in the capital.
Senior
Economic Adviser in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ms.
Anandi Subramanian and Shri Ravi Singh, Secretary General and CEO, World
Wildlife Fund India also addressed the gathering. Shri Abhay Kumar, Deputy
Economic Adviser in the Ministry, delivered the vote of thanks.
***
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