Himalayas are widely recognised as being the key to sustained ecosystem services such as hydrological balance, nutrient balance, mitigating climate change, biodiversity conservation and rural livelihoods.
These ecosystem services are today under threat due to serious loss in forest area and decline in quality of forests which can be measured by loss of species diversity of flora and fauna, declining basal area and other features. These were some of views expressed by experts at a two-day international workshop organised by the Centre for Ecology, Development and Research (CEDAR) and the Yale School of Forestry, Yale University, USA, together with the Forest Research Institute on ‘Forests of the Western Himalaya: Conservation and Restoration of Ecosystem Services in a time of Climate Change’.
Three technical sessions were held on the concluding day focusing on causes and ecosystem consequences of forest degradation and loss in Western Himalayas, scientific basis for conservation and restoration and the development of sustainable livelihoods including ecotourism, organic agriculture, and alternative energy sources. More than 20 governmental, non-governmental and grassroots organizations took part in the deliberations.
During the first technical session Dr Rajesh Thadani on CEDAR explained the processes of degradation of forests in the context of their unique physiological attributes, for instance, the mid-elevational oak forests which have unusually large capacity to capture water and cycle nutrients. Dr Jagdish Krishnaswamy talked about the change in mountain forests and hydrological balance due to climate change while Dr Raman Kumar elicited focus on the adverse changes brought about by management of natural forests and creation of monocultural plantations which has caused landscape-level decline in biodiversity.
In the second session, Uttarakhand chief conservator of forests, Wildlife, Dr Dhananjai Mohan spoke on the role of protected areas in biodiversity conservation while Chetan Aggarwal explained how forest conservation for water catchments can be achieved through many examples from Indian hills and other countries such as USA.
Discussion in the third session was focused on the various forest conservation initiatives that have been started in the Himalayas like ecotourism and improved cookstove for reducing fuelwood dependency.
The successes and failures of such programmes were also discussed with representatives of prominent NGOs also discussing their grassroots-level interventions to build and improve sustainable livelihoods in the Himalayas.
The workshop which was also financially supported by the Doon library and Research Centre saw 21 outstation participants along with 56 local participations from various institutions and organisations discussing to develop a set of recommendations for Himalayan ecological research that can feed productively into long-term conservation and field-level implementation.
