Research on climate change and biodiversity in India received a boost on Tuesday with a Rs. 14-crore grant from the Norwegian Embassy to Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) for five years.
While climate change research in India tends to focus on “adaptation measures” such as crop diversity or groundwater storage, these new resources will help ATREE look at “mitigation”, including an assessment of emissions and land use change, said Ganesan Balachander, director of ATREE. The institute would launch a programme that consolidates their climate change research, which comprises independent projects on subjects such as hydrology and forestry, he said.
The grant will also support 40 Indian Ph.D. students to undertake research in the field of sustainability, and enable faculty and student exchanges between Norwegian research institutes and ATREE. India and Norway have had a history of strong cooperation in the field of environmental research, said Norwegian Ambassador Eivind S. Homme, who launched the collaboration at the ATREE office.
