The Department of Ecology, Environment and Remote Sensing organized a stakeholder workshop for preparation of Climate Resilient City Action Plan for Jammu and Srinagar cities under the chairmanship of Commissioner Secretary Forest, Ecology and Environment, Sanjeev Verma here today.
During the workshop, discussion was held with the stakeholder departments to assess the existing status of service delivery and validated data sets to be collected for GHG emissions inventory of the city to generate a carbon inventory of the city.
Besides, the financial and policy level implications of the plan were deliberated upon. The impact of different mitigation and adaptation interventions were also discussed with the stakeholders.
Speaking on the occasion, Commissioner Secretary said that the impact of climate change is gravely affecting the population so this is the high time to work in the direction of climate adaptation and mitigation.
He spoke about various schemes initiated by the Prime Minister like Panchamrit and Mission Life. He added that the mitigation of climate change is a global phenomenon but the solutions are local which can be brought into action by behavioural change in our daily routines.
He emphasised that ‘Climate Resilient City Action Plan’ or ‘CRCAP’ for Srinagar and Jammu cities is a movement towards planning at local level. The plan will evolve with time but needs decentralized planning and mainstreaming of funds from all allied departments.
Commissioner Secretary also emphasised that prominence should be given to carbon neutral panchayat to make it workable and profound at panchayat level quoting the example of Palli Panchayat.
PCCF (HoFF,) J&K Forest Department, Dr. Mohit Gera, stated that considerable increase in the green house gas emissions during the last fifty years has created alarming situation in relation to the impact of climate change.
He added that J&K is blessed with healthy forest and biodiversity associated with it for balancing and offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions. In terms of vulnerability, J&K ranks higher than rest of the country due to high elevation and fragmentation as large number of villages are dependent on the natural resources.
He informed that forest department in collaboration with local municipalities have taken a number of initiatives like Biodiversity Registers and Local Biodiversity Strategy Action plans and these can be incorporated in CRPCP’s as a resilience measure.
S. Rakesh Kumar, Director DEE&RS, while speaking on the occasion, stated that cities have high risk and vulnerabilities due to concentration of people in cities and rapid rate of urbanization.
The CRCAP will lay foundation to plan for the vulnerabilities so that the cities are resilient enough to face a natural hazard and bounce back into action again. Various experts from TARU Leading Edge and Vasudha Foundation presented the vision for Climate Resilient City Action plan.
The event was attended by Chairperson PCC, Director Social Forestry, Chief Wildlife Warden, Director Soil and Water Conservation Department, Director, Forest Protection Force, and officers from JalShakti (PHE, IFC, RTIC), UEED, R&B, JMC, JDA, Health, Disaster Management, PDD, PDC, AH, Smart City, Tourism, Agriculture, RD&PR, IIT Jammu, Jammu University, CUJ, Town Planning, Smart City etc.
Later, a short technical session on Carbon Neutral Gram Panchayat - the models of UP, Palli and Kerela was also organized to sensitize the participants about achieving net zero emissions at grassroot level.