Dhara Vikas initiative in Sikkim wins Jury Special Mention at eNorth East Award Summit

GANGTOK, 01 Dec [IPR]: The eNorth East Award Summit was jointly organized by the North East Development Foundation and the Department of Information Technology, Government of Nagaland on 25 Nov at Kohima, Nagaland. The nomination of Sikkim’s Rural Management & Development Department titled “Village Spring Atlas for the conservation of Himalayan springs and adapting to climate change” bagged the Jury Special Mention in the Environment and Tourism Category for its innovative deployment of ICT tools, especially the internet medium to reach out to a wider clientele base. 

The objective of this initiative was twofold, first to initiate conservation of these mountain springs by undertaking resource mapping of the springs on a GIS platform to better understand this valuable resource, and the preparation of a village spring atlas. The data collected from the extensive component of the study has been made accessible online in the webportal - http://sikkimsprings.org.

This online database provides information on the location, GPS coordinates, land tenure, catchment status, dependency, discharge (supply / demand) of nearly 400 springs of Sikkim and is also linked to google earth. Secondly in action research mode we show that these dying springs can be revived by rainwater harvesting. It is expected that the results will help to better design the revival of mountain springs and to also mainstream this approach as a climate change adaptation intervention.

The award was received by Ghanashyam Kharel, IT Manager-MGNREGA, RM&DD and Bikash Subba, Faculty- SIRD.