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| Climate change: J&K’s Chief Forester carries agenda to Copenhagen | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Dec 8: When leaders and activists, experts and environmentalists from across the globe are rushing to Copenhagen for world’s most keenly watched summit on climate change, Jammu and Kashmir too has an agenda and presence on the table. At home when Terra Noami performed on the issue in Srinagar, an internationally renowned expert on climate change and state’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Jagdish Kishwan is off to Denmark sharing an opportunity with national and international government leaders to discuss the future course of the Climate Change strategy for the world.
An estimated 15,000 people representing Governments, NGOs, IGOs, along with over 2,000 journalists will travel to Copenhagen from all over the world for the conference. The organizers of the summit are trying their best to minimize greenhouse gas emissions as far as possible. Whatever cannot be avoided is to be offset.
As climate change becomes a global cry and threatens to affect us all individually, the Forest Department in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the State Forest Research Institute, is playing an important role in the mitigation process. “In this direction the first workshop on Climate change was held at Srinagar in 2007 which was attended by a large number of bureaucrats, scientists, forester and NGOs”, says Suresh Chugh, a Conservator of Forests.
The path-breaking event was followed by another workshop of the SFRI on Research Priorities in Carbon sequestration in March 2008 and there also the response was very good. The SFRI, under the stewardship of its Director RD Tiwari, then set up a carbon cell comprising a group of senior foresters pooled from various wings of the department that worked on formulation of the CDM Projects for the state in the fields of Solid Waste Management, Energy Conservation and Afforestation and Refforestation.
Later another two days workshop was organised in 2009 by SFRI on “Clean Development Mechanism” from 5-6th March at Jammu. According to Chugh, the purpose of workshop was to build capacity of the State in making viable CDM projects for getting CERs (Carbon Emission Reduction) and in addition, to have sustainable development of resources through cleaner technologies. It was attended by technocrats, Industrialists and members for the commerce, Rural development, Agriculture and allied areas.
The SFRI started playing pivotal role in this field and was upcoming as a premier resource agency in promoting Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) activity in the State. Experts from German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), as part of the initiative of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Govt. of India, made presentations on various aspects of CDM, to develop the capacity of the officers of the state in the highly technical and specialized field, to explore this fast growing field and make projects under CDM.
This was followed by organising an International Workshop on Glacial Retreat and Climate Change in the month of October 2009 at Srinagar. The workshop was a collaborative effort of the University of Kashmir, Government of Jammu and Kashmir and the Tata Energy and Resource Institute (TERI). The workshop was inaugurated by the Chief Minister. Apart from this the department has taken a number of research projects in this upcoming field. An action plan for the state on Climate change is also on the agenda of t he SFRI.
Jagdish Kishwan, who carries Jammu and Kashmir’s agenda at Copenhagen, is the former Director General of the ICFRE, Dehradun, which is the nodal agency of the Government of India for climate change negotiations. At Bali summit he was also one of the main negotiators on behalf of Government of India.
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