The recent disaster in Uttarakhand on June 16-17 has been an eye opener to all the stakeholders who witnessed one way or other how the carrying capacity of the fragile ecosystem of Uttarakhand State has been exceeded.
Extreme climatic events are not easy to understand and handle too, but their magnitude of devastation can be certainly minimised by respecting the laws of nature. A State level workshop to capture field lessons, its analysis and developing a road map will be held at the Forest Research Institute on Thursday to build on the lessons learnt in Uttarakhand.
While Uttarakhand collects its resources to address the immense damages caused by the recent tragedy it is now imperative to understand the magnitude of the impact, analyse it to capture valuable learnings to be used for informed policy decisions not only in Uttarakhand but all over the 11 mountain States and two hill districts of West Bengal in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR). Since the 16 per cent of the geographical area of the country provides valuable ecosystem services to more than 500 million population in the plains management of natural resources in the Himalayan region is an imperative.
Accordingly in collaboration with Regional Economic Development Programme (RED) of German International Cooperation (GIZ), FRI and Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA) an attempt is being made for understating the impacts, analysis of the situations and absence of provision that could have reduced the damage to human life, infrastructure, local livelihoods – both on farm and off farm and loss of valuable resources such as fertile top soil and agriculture fields including the issues pertaining to governance, geo-engineering, social aspect and others. Preparing mountain States of IHR to manage and mitigate natural hazards by building upon the lesson learnt from Uttarakhand.