Sanjeev Verma chairs workshop on CRCAP
JAMMU: The Department of Ecology Environment and Remote Sensing on Wednesday organised a stakeholder workshop for preparation of Climate Resilient City Action Plan (CRCAP) for Jammu and Srinagar cities.
The workshop was held under the chairmanship of Commissioner Secretary Forest Ecology and Environment, Sanjeev Verma.
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, the 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 panchayats 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 greenhouse gas emissions during the last fifty years has created alarming situations in relation to the impact of climate change.
He said 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 the rest of the country due to high elevation and fragmentation as a large number of villages are dependent on 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.
Director DEERS S. Rakesh Kumar 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 the 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.
A short technical session on Carbon Neutral Gram Panchayat – the models of UP, Palli and Kerela was also organized during the event to sensitize the participants about achieving net zero emissions at grassroot level.
KV News
