Climate expert says it’s 2015 redux for IIT-M

DUBAI: Nature spares no one. Floods and natural calamities don’t differentiate between people. The impact of rain within the IIT-Madras campus on Monday stands testimony to this. Even when IITs are considered the temples of learning, neither the weather forecast models nor other technological advances was helpful.

The lake on campus is at the brink of breaching and there is water everywhere. Of course this is not IIT’s problem alone. The water that has flown from various outlets have also accounted for flooding inside IIT-Madras. Nambi Appadurai, director, Climate Resilience Practice at World Resources Institute, India, said, “I live close to the lake within IIT-Madras, and my family is experiencing a difficult situation for the second time within a span of a decade.”

Last time, in 2015, I was at the Paris Conference of Parties (CoP) and now again in Dubai attending the 28th CoP. Years rolled by and there’s been no dearth for discussions and declarations. Yet we haven’t found a reasonable solution to manage calamities which have become a routine,” he said. Nambi spent a tense morning as he and his wife Indumathi Nambi, a professor at IIT-Madras, were out of the country when severe cyclonic storm ‘Michaung’ triggered massive flooding in Chennai.

“Both of us are not around, having to travel on professional commitments. My ageing mom and our pet dog are alone at home. Fortunately, thanks to our colleagues, the IIT administration and friends to whom we are eternally indebted, we managed to shift my mother to the IIT guest house at the nick of time, before water started trickling in to our house this morning. We met the same scenario in 2015,” he said.