After suffering the devastating floods in September 2014, Jammu and Kashmir is on the verge of another disaster due to ecological degradation caused by blatant exploitation of natural resources.
On the one hand, forest cover in Jammu and Kashmir, which was once known for its green cover, is shrinking with every passing day while on the other, extreme weather phenomena are becoming a routine affair in the fragile Himalayan state.
Brisk engineering driven development in hilly areas at the cost of the environment is contributing a lot towards ecological imbalance in the region.
“The politician-land mafia nexus has encroached upon over 2.66 lakh kanals of forest land, which has a direct impact on the ecology of the state,” admitted Minister for Forest, Environment and Ecology Bali Bhagat today.
He was addressing a one-day conference on Climate Change Agenda, Paris, jointly organised by the Centre for Environment Education, Ahmedabad, Centre for Environment Education and Training, Jammu, and Press Club of Jammu.
“The politically well-connected and influential people have encroached upon this huge chunk of forest land as previous regimes have not shown the courage to take on the mafia,” Bhagat said. He added that reclaiming the land from encroachers was the biggest challenge to save the ecology of the state.
“Organising seminars and workshops will not yield any result unless we will take some concrete steps on the ground,” he said. He claimed that over 21,000 kanals of forest land had been reclaimed from encroachers during the past nine months.
Dr Rahul Goswami, UNESCO expert on climate change, cautioned against brutally exploiting natural resources in Jammu and Kashmir. “Last year’s devastating floods were the result of climate change. There is a need to take some concrete step to protect the forests in the state,” he said.
He was of the opinion that “instead of engineering driven development, we have to adopt environment driven development to protect our earth from repeated natural disasters”.
Experts pointed out the recent incidents of cloudburst in the higher reaches of Jammu and Kashmir as an example of climate change. They cautioned that repeated incidents of cloudburst during this year’s monsoon were warning signals and there was a need to take some preventive measures.
The Leh cloudbursts in 2010, devastating floods in 2014 and numerous incidents of cloudburst in 2015 were an indication of changing conditions across the Himalayas and the occurrence of extreme weather events in the region, they warned.
JK on verge of another natural disaster: Experts
