IRTC celebrated World Water Week with two-days webinar on this year’s theme “Building Resilience Faster”. Dr. Manoj P. Samuel, Executive Director, CWRDM inaugurated the webinar on 26 August with a session on Climate Change and Water Management- Issues and Strategies” followed by Dr. P. Harinarayanan, Principal Scientist, KSCSTE on Enactments for Wetland Conservation.

On the next day of the webinar, Dr. Ajit Haridas, Dr. Suryanarayanan and Dr. Salom Gnana Thanga V. led the sessions on Laws on Water Pollution, Valuing Water with Special Reference to Ground Water and Anti-microbial Resistance in Water: An Emerging Threat respectively.

Prof. P.K. Raveendran, Director of Research, IRTC moderated the webinar.

NABARD Chief General Manager R. Balachandran visited IRTC office on 11 January 2021 and interacted with the CEOs of the KFW soil project PFAs. Dr. Sreekumar, Director, IRTC presided over the meeting and DDM Lalu P.N. Kutty delivered the agenda for discussion.

There was a detailed discussion on the utilisation of maintenance fund, indicators for assessing KfW project and the loan scheme contemplated by NABARD with banks. Most of the participants favoured entrusting full responsibility to VWCs in concurrence with the concerned PFAs to decide on the utilisation of maintenance fund since it has been operational since the last ten years based on NABARD guidelines.

CGM also said that NABARD will come up with a direction regarding the parameters related to climate change resilience to be monitored for KfW projects. The visit was part of the annual assessment of NABARD- IRTC projects, mainly KfW Soil Project. The purpose of the projects under the programme is to reduce vulnerability to climate change of small-scale farmers in selected watersheds through the stabilization, enhancement and sustainable use of soil and water resources. IRTC as Project Facilitating Agency of eight Watersheds in Palakkad.