The Small Earth Nepal (SEN) in collaboration with Alumni Disability Initiative Grants- 2019 (ADIG) and Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Government of Nepal organized a workshop on “Equal access to weather and climate Information” on the virtual platform on 14th May 2020. The workshop brought together 39 participants from various relevant organizations.
The objective of the workshop was to provide a common platform for the DHM, climate scientists, representatives from different disability service providers and different disabled people’s organizations and people with a wide range of disabilities to discuss the challenges and needs of the disabled people for increasing accessibility of climate and weather information. Also, as Nepal currently is in the process of establishment of a Weather Presentation System (Weather Studio) at DHM such events play a crucial role in sensitizing policy makers and relevant stakeholders towards taking urgent actions on making weather and climate services and products disabled-friendly.
The event was chaired by Dr. Jagadishwor Karmacharya, Deputy Director-General, Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), and moderated by Mr. Sagar Prasai, Founder and Managing Director, Diverse Patterns Pvt. Ltd. The workshop was incepted with the welcome speech by Dr. Dhiraj Pradhananga, President, SEN, and a grantee of ADIG. He explained the objectives of the workshop and highlighted the concerns shown by DHM in access to weather and climate products and services for disabled people.
Mr. Raju Dhar Pradhananga, Senior Divisional Meteorologist, DHM highlighted the activities carried out by DHM in generation and dissemination of weather information VIZ: Observation of weather information from different sources including ground sensors, weather balloons, radar and satellite images. Mr. Pradhananga also pinpointed the now-casting, agro-met services, climate services of weather provided by DHM through the medium of telephone, noticeboards, social media (Twitter, Facebook), emails, online news portals and newspaper, radio, TV. Also, he underlined that in the near future, mobile application, SMS, workstations of forecasters will be done for information dissemination where the video with sign language can be used in the case of Nepal as well.
Dr. Jagadishwor Karmacharya, in his closing remarks, underlined the need and collaborative efforts from concerned organizations to address the services and products such as the app, web portal, and the TV station of DHM. He also shared that DHM is working to develop a weather studio to make it disabled-friendly in collaboration with the national television.
With the active participation of people with different disabilities, DHM, MFD forecasters, climate scientists, and civil society, this e- workshop has successfully served as a good initiation to raise the voice and concern of the people with disabilities in the field of weather and climate information access.
