Dia Mirza Instagram – My day started with visiting the @undpinindia and @unccd stalls at the #UNCCDCOP14 exhibit. An engaging and insightful experience. The UNDP stall helped me understand through augmented reality the impact of #ClimateChange on human lives. No one is excluded from its effects, but the one’s most affected are people that live in direct conflict with weather events. Their lives, their livelihood and health is affected by extreme weather events like floods, drought and extreme weather conditions. And each one of us can contribute towards reversing these effects by supporting organisations that protect wildlife/biodiversity, planting trees, managing our waste and consumption, following largely plant based diets and saying NO to single use plastics. After the exhibition I had the opportunity to participate at a round table on – Rural and urban communities: failing or flourishing together. The objective of this session was to secure guidance on how urban and rural areas can work together to manage the land sustainably. “Urban and rural areas are partners, not competitors, and that they exist in a state of mutual inter-dependence which the need for more sustainable use of resources will intensify. We also need to recognize that there are different types of rural and urban area, depending on settlement patterns, geographical features and levels of economic development and that consequently there is no one single ‘urban-rural relationship’, but a variety of relationships which need to be constructed to reflect the needs of the partners involved and to create win-win scenarios.” Note: the round table had no plastic bottles! Thank you @moefccgoi For this engagement that walked the talk by ensuring there was no use of #SingleUsePlastics. And finally a Twitter live with an ALL women panel, Bahar Dutt, @aminajmohammed and myself discussing the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals, why we all need to imbibe these goals and how can we make the #GlobalGoals a reality. “Start with one goals that affects you the most. I choose SDG 11 ,12,13,14 and 15. Because if we don’t achieve these goals we cannot hope to achieve the rest! #FlashbackFriday