Meeting for the first time at the Vikas Soudha on Wednesday, the panel, under the chairmanship of Prof B K Chandrashekhar, chairman, legislative council, deliberated on its roadmap in the coming days. With the department of forest, ecology and environment taking an active role, the committee will bring together various departments to look at their daily activities and prepare a baseline for the state’s contribution to climate change.

A few sub-groups will identify the areas of concern in a few days and start collecting available information. “Once this is available, we can start discussing strategies on what needs to be done and how,” said Prof Chandrashekhar.

The departments of forest and  industries and water and pollution boards have come forward to colloborate on this effort. The Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute will coordinate and provide administrative support and funds.

The final report of the findings will be prepared in four months. This will have an inventory of issues related to climate change from local to state levels and in all the sectors concerned.

The committee comprising legislators, secretaries from the many departments, academics and scientists agreed that there was a need to improve understanding on the subject.

This also meant bringing many more players into the network like industries and entrepreneurs who have set up CDM projects. The state is among the top few in the numbers of such projects that qualify for carbon credits in the international market for setting up sustainable projects.

Public debate

The chairman is also keen to have public debates on the subject. Anyone can write to the committee to bring things to its notice, he said. “We need to be more transparent in our workings. This is one such attempt to involve everyone into the act,” he told Deccan Herald. Global warming is a serious issue that needs to be tackled immediately, he added.

The committee would now go in for statutory backing to empower it.

Eventually, the committee will work a policy framework to supplement and harmonise with the national policy to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

As observed by Aravind Jannu, secretary, environment and ecology, all this will take time as it means working across departments, identifying the linkages between disasters and climate changes, prioritising needs, etc.