In Punjab State Council
for Science & Technology, Chandigarh a Node on the subject area
‘Water Resource Management’ was established in January 2001 under
Sustainable Development Network Programme (SDNP) of Environmental
Information System (ENVIS) by Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF),
GoI and in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
and International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.
The SDNP Node further
continued to work on the same subject area ‘Water Resource
Management’ as ENVIS Node under the World Bank assisted Environment
Management Capacity Building Technical Assistance Project (EMCBTAP).
This ENVIS Node was established in Council on March 2002 and a
bi-lingual (in English & Punjabi) website was launched (English:
July, 2002 & Punjabi: August, 2002) for this Node with url:
www.water-mgmt.com.
During this period the Ministry set up another EMCBTAP-ENVIS Node in
the Council in December 2002 to work on locale specific issues and a
bi-lingual (in English & Punjabi) website to work on ‘State
Environment Issues’ was launched (English: April,2003 & Punjabi:
August, 2003). Thus, two Nodes on ‘Water Resource Management’ and
‘State Environment Issues’ started operating in Council during the
year 2002.
The Node on ‘State Environment Issues’ was further upgraded to ENVIS
Centre in January, 2005 on the subject ‘Status of Environment &
Related Issues’ under the aegis of MoEF, Govt. of India, in the
10th five year plan. The Centre was established on
1st February 2005
and the Website was launched on 15 February 2005 with Url:
www.punenvis.nic.in.
Further, the Punjab ENVIS Centre was identified by the MoEF as one
of the 20 selected ENVIS Centers (out of 78 Centers at that time) in
India, to work as partners under Sustainable Development Network
Programme (SDNP) in collaboration with Indo- Canadian Environment
Fund (ICEF) for two years i.e. 2005-2007. Under this collaboration,
the Centre was given an additional responsibility to work on the
thematic area ‘Agriculture & Water Harvesting’ to strengthen the
ENVIS network for Sustainable Development. On the
ENVIS
Center’s website
(www.punenvis.nic.in)
a SNDP-ENVIS link was provided and the Centre collected,
collated and disseminated the national level information on the
assigned subject and uploaded the same on this link.
Since 2005, the Punjab
ENVIS Centre in PSCST is working on ’Status of Environment & Related
Issues’ with
url:www.punenvis.nic.in.
Presently,
the Centre is working with the following objectives:
-
To Identify and highlight the State Environmental issues.
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Creation of database covering all aspects of Environmental issues
of Punjab State.
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Preparation of “State of
Environment Reports (SoER).”
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Publishing Newsletters, books, etc on State Environment Issues.
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Monthly compilation of Environment related News items and Events.
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Identification of information/data gaps in the field of
Environmental Management.
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Establishing linkages with information users and providers from
among Govt., academia, general public, NGOs etc.
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To respond to queries from Govt. and general public related to
specified subject area.
The Centre is putting in
its concerted efforts to collect, collate & disseminate information
relating to Status of Punjab Environment & Related Issues with its
activities. This website will meet its objectives if it is able to
generate serious thought and discussion about the environmental
problems of
Punjab so that scientific solutions are evolved and concerted action
is taken to implement them jointly by the Government and the Public.
