New Delhi, Oct 20 (IANS) India will set up 50 weather stations in Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan to measure and monitor variations in climate, it was decided at the eighth meeting of SAARC environment ministers here Tuesday.
India will also pay $1 million to the SAARC forestry centre in Bhutan and another $1 million to the SAARC coastal zone management centre in the Maldives, India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh announced at the end of the two-day meeting.

The eight countries that form the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — also decided they would form a bloc at the Copenhagen climate summit this December to make a statement and hold an event there “to highlight our vulnerabilities to climate change and the actions we are taking”, Ramesh said.

The south Asian countries would hold an annual workshop on actions to fight climate change, the minister added, saying the first workshop would be held here in February or March next year.

The countries would finalise a regional environment protection treaty for adoption at the next SAARC summit in Thimphu next April, he added, pointing out that climate change would be the theme of the summit.

A “rapid response mechanism” to natural disasters would also be finalised and adopted at the summit.

Ramesh said river management, pollution control and transborder biodiversity conservation would be three areas of cooperation among SAARC countries. However, there is still no agreement between various countries having common rivers on sharing any water flow data.

The meeting adopted a “Delhi Statement” on cooperation in environment, though Bangladesh’s Minister for Environment and Forests Hasan Mahmud told IANS the statement had not been discussed by the ministers. Environment ministers of seven SAARC countries and the environment secretary of Pakistan attended the meeting.