Principle Chief Conservator of Forests R.K Gupta inaugurated a special folk media campaign here today for Forest-PLUS programme to be implemented in collaboration with USAID/India’s Assistance Objective of accelerating India’s transition to a low emissions economy by taking REDD+ actions to scale.
Speaking on the occasion, Gupta said that the project aims to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhance sequestration through afforestation, conservation, and sustainable management of forests.
Gupta said that climate change had emerged as one of the key global challenges of the 21st century and rising temperatures, increasingly extreme weather events leading to natural disasters, and variable rainfall would affect peoples’ livelihoods and health. He said that the global community was faced with daunting challenges in transforming this situation and visionary and sustained political leadership, international co-operation, along-with innovation would be needed to implement transformational solutions.
Principle Chief Conservator said that the Forest PLUS programme would address sectoral barriers, build human and institutional capacity, develop and deploy improved scientific methods for carbon inventory and reference baselines, and actively engages stakeholders and create an enabling environment for REDD+ implementation.
Senior Forestry Advisor, USAID Paul Varghese urged the people to share knowledge with others and play important role in creating a better environment around us and in mitigating climate change through this process.
He said that the Green India Mission under the National Action Plan on Climate Change was a very encouraging initiative, which was working on improving and increasing India’s forest cover.
Communication Specialist, Forest-PLUS Programme, Dr. V Dakshinamurthy, disclosed that this was a five-year program to improve the management of forests in a way that can enhance carbon sequestration and reduce emission from forests. The Forest-PLUS would carry out a communication campaign in schools and villages to promote a dialogue on importance of tree plantation. The campaign would be intensively followed up in more than 150 schools and nearby villages of Rampur circle sensitizing children and community members to grow more trees, he added.
Vandna Kala Rang Manch, a traditional Folk Media Group presented a skit on environmental changes and forest degradation issues on the occasion.
