To celebrate World Environment Day, Amity School of Earth and Environmental organized webinar on Innovation and Technology for Ecosystem Restoration and Clean Environment on 5th June 2021.
Ecosystem Restoration’, being the most appropriate subject to substantiate the importance, Amity School of Earth and Environmental Sciences takes the opportunity to celebrate 5th June 2021 by organizing an online webinar and panel discussion with eminent speakers in the field of agri-environmental technology and climate change and food security to inspire young minds and ignite the spark of research and innovation in emerging scientists, faculty and students on the occasion of World Environment Day. This year, the theme of World Environment Day being ‘Ecosystem Restoration’, is the most appropriate subject to substantiate the importance of a clean and green planet.
The Plenary and expert session started in the benign presence and Words of Wisdom by Honorable Dr. Aseem Chauhan, Chancellor, Amity University, Gurgaon, Haryana, wherein he enthusiastically welcomed all the esteemed speakers, invited guests, faculty members and students. He raised his concern for the ongoing environmental issues and how we can attain the balance between the nature and anthropogenic activities. He addressed some issues of environment like climate change, air pollution and water pollution. He also talks about role of education system and research in improvement of environment quality and also provide knowledge, inspiration and leadership to the students.
The session started with Dr. Vinod Kumar Sharma, Senior Scientist Division for Bioenergy, Biorefinery and Green Chemistry, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). He delivered lecture on Renewable Energy Technologies at the Crossroads of Global Energy Grids. He threw light on how the pace of the rapid industrialization, economic growth, human civilization and its progress, restrain inadequate availability of energy demand to meet basic needs of the society. In this regard ENEA has worked on energy efficiency practices and also presents innovative design of world's first solar disk integrated with an innovative microturbine. This novel system eases the operational management and the modularity enabling its use for small shopping malls and businesses, supermarkets and schools, both connected and detached from the power grid. He emphasized that if attention is given to a range of eco-friendly energy technologies in the developing countries, then fighting against the environmental issues would be much easier. Italy is working close-knit with India in this regard to make Earth a better place to live in.
The session was led further by Dr. ALESSANDRO AGOSTINI, ENEA - Centro Ricerche Casaccia, Rome, Italy. He delivered the Keynote lecture on “Innovations in Agrivoltaics for crop production, energy generation and climate change”. He talked about Agrivoltaic (AV) systems,which is a photovoltaic (PV) technology in which PV panels are mounted at a sufficient height from the ground to enable conventional cultivation practices underneath. The speaker introduced us with the modelling of the environmental and economic performances of an innovative agrivoltaic system built on tensile structures (Agrovoltaico®) in the Po Valley. The environmental performances of AV system as compared to other PV system in all the areas of environmental concern (climate change, eutrophication, air quality and resource consumption) and the correlation with a Levelized Cost Of Electricity vis a vis those of ground or roof mounted PV systems was discussed during his lecture.
The session was carried further by Dr. Himanshu Pathak, Director ICAR-National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati, Maharashtra, India. He delivered lecture on “Climate Change and Food Security in India”. His lecture focused upon sustainable agricultural practices. He explained how Sustainable crop production is the key to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially for country like India. He further explained that to achieve sustainable and environment-friendly farming, the crop should be cultivated in the region with minimum environmental footprint with the aid of ecoregional approach of farming. Ecoregions are geographical regions with similar ecological, soil and climatic conditions. Rainfall, temperature and soil are the three most important biophysical factors determining ecoregions for growing rice. His lecture gave an insight into delineation of suitable ecoregions in India considering rainfall, temperature and soil texture as the major contributing factors. The identification of site-specific improved technologies can be significant for enhancing productivity, profitability, climate resilience and sustainability of farming in the country
Next session was led by Prof. Gufran Beig, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India. His lecture was on: “Drivers of air quality and climate change in Indian mega cities”. He discussed that out of the 26 mega-cities in the world, 13 of them are affected by atmospheric brown clouds with high aerosol loadings and 5 of them are in South Asia. New Delhi (India) is one of the world's most polluted megacities. During his lecture he talked about air pollution levels in megacities and their impacts on weather and climate, evaluated using the WRF-Chem model. A sector-based analysis and its performance to assess the contributions to pollution and direct radiative forcing from transport, residential, power and industrial emissions was his key focus.
He also gave an insight of reshaping our Sustainable goals. He quoted” Our goal should be to learn from the silver lining in air quality and to seize upon lining to institutionalize it rather than only enjoying lockdown green visibility”.
The session was followed by a Question and answer session wherein the speakers answered various queries being put up while their lecture was ongoing.
Total 508 students and 83 faculties attended the session.