Kohima Summit 2013: Mountain perspective on research, info

Our Correspondent | EMN
KOHIMA, AUGUST 2

THE State level workshop and pre-summit to 2013 Sustainable Mountain Development Summit III (SMDS) was held here at Circuit House, Kohima on Friday. The workshop was organized by Sustainable Development Forum Nagaland (SDFN), which is also going to host the 2013 SDMS-III at Kohima from September 25-27, in association with India Water Portal. Giving a brief overview of SMDS-III, also referred as Kohima Summit 2013, Ratno D of SDFN said SDMS is a platform of Indian Mountain Initiative (IMI) involving 11 Indian Himalayan states to collectively share experiences, discuss issues of development and find ways that influence national and state public policies. He explained that the SMDS-III, like its preceding two summits held at Nainital in 2011 and Gangtok in 2012, will aim to institutionalize a mountain perspective through sharing and collaborating on research, information and knowledge dissemination on specific themes.
Ratno stated that the themes of the Kohima Summit will include water springs, river and water governance and challenges; forest- community governance, opportunities and threats; and agriculture- sustainable mountain agriculture, practices, knowledge and technologies. He also informed that there will be pre-summit events such as Grassroots Comics workshop. It will be held from August 27 to 29 at Jubilee Memorial Convention Hall Lerie, Kohima, for the youth in Nagaland.
During the summit, the youth will learn how to express concerns through the medium of comics. He also said there will be side events including policy makers dialogue, legislators meet, State Action Plan for Climate Change (SAPCC), mountain caucus as well as exhibitions and demonstrations.
The presentation on the themes of SMDS-III and discussions were led by Vengota of NEPED and agriculturist Dr. Cressida Jamir.
Earlier, commissioner & secretary Menukhol John, who chaired the programme also delivered the welcome address. The state level workshop was organized with a view to collectively planning for IMI activities and to identify appropriate papers, issues and concerns to be presented during the summit.
The host of Kohima Summit, the SDFN, formed in 2012 is a registered non-profit forum where the Naga civil societies, academia, entrepreneurs, government and the media collectively discuss and work in facilitating the state towards a sustainable development pathway. The SDFN aims to facilitate dialogues, research and sustainable policy making in mind the state’s economy, environment and issues of leadership, research and documentation.
SDFN members have informed that as part of SMDS-III, a Youth Summit will be held from September 22 to 23 at Capital Convention Centre, Kohima with a view to identifying youth specific challenges based on the main summit themes and to provide the youth with specific leadership skills. The Youth Summit, to be jointly organized by LEAD India, YouthNet, ICIMOD and SDFN, will have participation of youth from all the 11 states and hill district of Darjeeling in West Bengal.
Pre-summit theme based field visits will be organized to areas in and around Kohima to give participants the opportunity to engage with local communities and understand their challenges.
The 3rd Indian Himalayan Photography Competition will also be held in Kohima from September 25 to 27 as part of the Kohima Summit. The competition will be held under general and student categories on the themes ‘Life and Livelihood in the Mountains’, ‘Tradition and Modernity in Mountain Society’ and ‘Biodiversity in the Mountains’