To raise awareness on climate change and its impacts, a special science express train will be flagged off this week from Safdarjung Railway station here and will cover 68 stations across 20 states.
The Science Express Climate Action Special train- SECAS II- will run between February 17 and September 8 culminating its journey at Gandhinagar.
The train will cover over 19,000 kilometres and stop at 68 stations across 20 states.
An official statement said the Science Express, redesigned as SECAS, intends to contribute towards increasing understanding of the science of climate change, the observed and anticipated impacts, and different possible responses.
It said during the seven-month journey, SECAS will roll into Tripura for the first time.
"It is an innovative mobile science exhibition mounted on a 16-coach AC train, which has been custom-built for Department of Science & Technology (DST) by Indian Railways," the statement said.
Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave, Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan, Minister of State Y S Choudhary, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and Minister of State Manoj Sinha are likely to be present at the flagging off ceremony.
This unique mobile exhibition was first launched in October 2007 by DST and since then it has travelled across India eight times, covering about 1,42,000 km and exhibiting at 455 locations while more than 1.50 crore people visited it over 1,602 exhibition days.
Science Express has become the largest, the longest running and the most visited mobile science exhibition and it has six entries in the Limca Book of Records.
The exhibition will convey a message about Climate Change and will also be a good opportunity to generate a dialogue and discussion, the statement said.
The state-of-the-art exhibition on board the SECAS aims to create awareness among various sections of society as to how climate change can be combated through mitigation and adaptation.
Some of the broad themes of the coaches include underlying reasons for climate change, with a key message that the present change in the climate is due to human activities, impact of climate change and ways to reduce it, adaptation strategies and adaptation measures being taken by India among others.
It will also include mitigation and various programmes implemented, international negotiations for climate change and focus on concept of lifestyle choices on what one can do to 'Increase the Handprint and decrease your Footprint'.
Science Express Phase I to IV showcased cutting-edge research in Science and Technology being carried out worldwide while phase V to VII was based on the theme of biodiversity.
The previous three phases of Science Express were rolled out as a joint initiative of DST and MoEFCC as 'Biodiversity Special'.
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