Today, October 17, a one-day technical workshop was organised in Srinagar for the purpose of preparing the Annual Plan of Operations (APOs) for the next fiscal year 2024–25.
The implementing agencies were supposed to follow these guidelines so that they could create an APO for the next fiscal year that was scientific, focused on the outputs, and centred on the people.
Dheeraj Gupta, the Principal Secretary of the Department of Forests, Ecology, and Environment, was the one to officially open the workshop.
He lauded the department for its organisation of the brainstorming session on the development of comprehensive APOs and thanked them for their efforts.
He emphasised the need for compensatory reforestation to be carried out in order to fully compensate for the loss of environmental products and services that would be caused by the conversion of forest land to other uses. In addition to this, he provided the Forest and associated agencies with recommendations to speed up greening activities by making use of more advanced technology.
In addition to that, Subhash Chandra, who is the Additional Director General of Forests and Chief Executive Officer of the National Authority for the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change in New Delhi, was present at the session. In response to the attendees’ questions, he provided his comments. He emphasised the need for meaningful consultations with Panchayats in the process of formulating APOs so that the needs of the local populations for fodder, medicinal plants, firewood, and other products of the forest may be addressed by the plantation closures.
Roshan Jaggi, who is the PCCF and HoFF for the J&K Forest Department, emphasised the need to formulate scientific suggestions in compliance with the prescriptions of the Working Plan. In addition to this, he emphasised the importance of formulating plans in an integrated manner, in which the Soil and Water Conservation Department would be responsible for the treatment of the upper reaches of the landscape, the Social Forestry Department would be responsible for the treatment of the areas close to habitation, and the Forestry Department would be responsible for the rehabilitation of forests.
In addition to the cultivation of high-quality plants in nurseries, he proposed the establishment of more Nagar vans. He gave a comprehensive presentation on the creation of high-quality planting material via the use of contemporary nursery practices.
The Chief Executive Officer of CAMPA, Asaf Mehmood Sagar, provided an explanation of CAMPA’s regulatory system. When it came to the care of forest regions in an all-encompassing fashion, he requested that the forest officers use a landscape and watershed approach.
In order to enhance the water and moisture balance of the habitat, he stressed the need to include water collection systems and ponds as essential components of APO.
