Project Dhyan can be described as a community outreach program for disaster preparedness. It was an initiative of the Department of Geography, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. As per NOAA's report, the Earth's temperature has risen by 0.08° C per decade since 1880, and the rate of warming over the past 40 years is more than twice i.e. 0.18° C per decade since 1981. It also indicates that the year 2021 was likely to be between the 5th and 7th warmest year globally. Indian cities are also not an exception to this. One city or the other breaks the record of high as well as low temperatures every year. So, Delhi is too equally highly prone to the consequences of climate change because of its sensitive geo-ecological set-up, strategic location and inherent socio-economic disparities. It lies in the high-risk seismic zone and is highly vulnerable to other multiple natural hazards like floods, heat and cold waves and epidemics. In the context of these emerging menaces, the project proposes to formulate the disaster management and recovery strategies by considering all the members of the society as well as the local environmental conditions. The project advocates community-oriented approach that considers the different levels of vulnerability among different sections of society and develop a community-based disaster preparedness for safety and resilience. It believes that, it is the community itself which gets impacted by the disasters thus, if it is well-equipped and prepared beforehand, inevitable disasters would cause less harm.
Therefore, the community centric disaster management action itself would be the most fundamental step towards building sustainable communities particularly, with regards to the global prevailing threats like climate change and pandemics like Covid 19 outbreak. In the initial stages of action, Project Dhyan emphasises the vulnerabilities associated with heat wave hazard across different socio-economic-spatial pockets of Delhi. The choice of heat wave as the main issue was considered worthy since heat wave due to extreme temperatures has emerged as the second deadliest type of disaster after floods in the world in 2019, accounting for 25% of deaths(EM-DAT 2020). Hence, the Project entails mapping for mitigating the extreme heat waves in Delhi through a community-centric disaster management initiative. In addition to that, the project has advocated the documenting of the social memories of women who had experienced climate related disasters as Survivors, Rescuers and Relief workers. This will help in engendering the climate change activities and discourses worldwide.
The SDG 11, 13 and 3 will also be upheld.
This is what my project is all about.