Guwahati: In a significant development that augurs well for people residing in hilly areas, legislators from the country’s mountain states have called for drafting separate building codes exclusively for them. This was resolved during the three-day GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) India Legislators’ Meet that concluded at Itanagar on Friday.
The legislators’ meet was organised as part of the fourth edition of the Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS-IV). Law makers from India’s hilly and mountainous states that took part in the deliberations also decided to raise the issue of forming a separate building code for mountainous regions at different forums, including State Legislative Assemblies and Parliament.
The move assumes significance as it comes in the backdrop of the devastating Nepal earthquake earlier this year, besides the disastrous cloudbursts in Ladakh and Uttarkhand couple of years back, all of which claimed several thousand lives.
“The legislators asserted that the building code applicable to the whole of the nation is not ideal for buildings in the mountain States,” the resolution read.
The resolution also welcomed the decision of Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar to meet legislators from the Himalayan states to discuss issues related to the sustainable development of mountain states during the winter session of parliament.
It was also resolved that MPs from the mountainous states will meet before the meeting with Javadekar to deliberate and decide upon the issues to be raised by them for the betterment of all mountain states in a sustainable manner and the issues to be raised during the Conference of Parties (COP) 21 climate summit to be held in Paris later this year.
The resolution also said that the legislators, in groups and in their own states, would seriously examine all the issues and come back in the next SMDS with concrete and implementable policies, programmes and solutions to take the mantle of climate change adaptation and mitigation forward.
Noting that 41 districts across 11 mountain states were yet to formulate district disaster management plans, the resolution stated that the districts would be identified in a fast-track manner and a disaster management plan would be formulated for each of the districts within the next one year.
Meanwhile, Arunachal Pradesh legislators decided to come together under the banner of GLOBE-IMI (Integrated Mountain Initiative) Pan Himalayan Legislators’ Forum.
This was the fourth edition of the GLOBE India Legislators’ Meet. The previous editions were held in Sikkim (June 2012), Nagaland (September 2013) and New Delhi (December 2014). The three-day SMDS-IV ends on Friday.
