University School of Environment Management (USEM), IP University, organised a six-day faculty development programme (FDP) on environmental impacts of COVID-19 pandemic: challenges and future research. Eminent Environmentalists and experts from various fields like professor CK Varshne, professor Emeritus, School of Environment Sciences, JNU; Padma Shri professor Dr Maesh Verma, Vice Chancellor, GGSIPU; Ravi Dadhich, Registrar, GGSIPU; professor VK Jain, Vice Chancellor, Tezpur University, Assam; Dr M Mohapatra, DG, IMD, New Delhi; Dr Anand Krishnan, professor of Community Medicine, AIIMS, actively guided the FDP.
Professor NC Gupta, Dean, USEM, IP University, inaugurated the programme. The FDP covered many themes including origin of COVID-19, lessons learned from the crisis, healing of earth and ecosystem during the lockdown period, impact on small holding farmers/MSMEs, reverse migration and future sustainable environment, Sendai framework for disaster risk management, climate change agenda and action for post-COVID scenario.
In welcome address, professor NC Gupta enlightened the audience about importance of resources and how the water and air quality has shown significant improvement during the lockdown period. Professor Dr Mahesh Verma and Ravi Dadhich congratulated Dean, USEM and organising team for organising such an important faulty development programme. Professor Mahesh Verma said that the outbreak of COVID-19 has forced us to alter the way of understanding life. Eminent speakers and experts including professor Anubha Kaushik, professor Prodyut Bhattacharya, professor Jens Rydell, Dr Abi T Vanak, Dr Mukesh Thakur, Dr Faiyaz Khudsar, Dr Meenakshi Arora, Dr Ravinder Khaiwal, Dr Apoorva Ratan Ghosh, professor HP Garg, professor Sas Biswas, professor Agni Mitra, Dr Sanjeev Sarangi, Bharti Chaturvedi, professor NC Pant, professor CP Kaushik, professor Anil Kumar Gupta, professor Arun Kumar, Dr Amarnath Chatterjee, professor Shyamala Mani, professor M Afzal Wani and Dr Suman Mor, share their experiences on environment and biodiversity, climate, rural livelihood, medicine, wildlife and so on.
Professor Amulya K Panda, director of National Institute of Immunology, gave the keynote address during valedictory ceremony. All deans and directors of various university schools, faculty members and research scholars were present and contributed to the successful organisation of FDP.