To serve as guiding tool for assessing impact of land use
*Step to help in creating better governance mechanism
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, May 5: Jammu has become the 9th and Srinagar 10th Smart City in the country to have first of its kind City Biodiversity Index and this will serve as a guiding tool for assessing the impacts of land use planning on urban biodiversity. Moreover, the Index will help the administrators in monitoring the progress of the city in mainstreaming biodiversity conservation into urban governance.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that among the cities selected to be developed under the Smart City Mission of the Government of India, Jammu has become the 9th and Srinagar 10th to have City Biodiversity Index, which has been prepared with the efforts of J&K Biodiversity Council and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, South Asia.
The city of Jammu has rich and rare assets in the form of flora and fauna due to the presence of various natural ecosystems and as the urban population grows, the role of the city administration becomes more challenging to strike a balance between effective land use and management of natural eco-systems.
Similarly, the city of Srinagar is home to an array of flora and fauna due to the presence of various natural ecosystems including wetlands besides several beautiful gardens and parks and it is the responsibility of the administrators to protect and improve these biologically diverse areas and to pass them to future generations.
Keeping all these aspects in mind, the City Biodiversity Index of Jammu and Srinagar has been prepared and with this Jammu has become 9th Smart City in the country and Srinagar 10th to have the index, which is a self-assessment tool and the city needs to repeat the index every 5 years to compare its own progress. The other cities having Biodiversity Index are Kochi, Hyderabad, Siliguri, Gangtok, Rajkot, Dehradun, Kolkata and Pimpri Chinchwaad.
There are a total of 23 Indicators under three components namely Native Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services provided by Biodiversity and Governance and Management of Biodiversity. Jammu has obtained 42 points out of total 72 while as Srinagar has secured 45 points out of total 72.
“The City Biodiversity Index will serve as a guiding tool for assessing the impacts of land use planning on urban biodiversity. This will also ensure informed decision making for conservation of biodiversity at local level and further create opportunities for stakeholders to come together for developing strategies to integrate the concerns of all life forms in the city planning and management”, officers of the Forest Department said.
Stating that urban sustainability is realized when social, economic and environmental aspects are all taken together, they said that biodiversity and ecosystem services are of great importance for maintaining the sustainability of the city and City Biodiversity Index will go a long way in this direction, adding “the objective assessment of the indicators will enable the city administrators to plan, management and measure city’s biodiversity from time to time and this will also help to improve the biodiversity”.
As far as Jammu is concerned, natural ecosystems have already been replaced by built-up areas and the remnant parts are threatened by anthropogenic activities. Moreover, sand and gravel mining is common in River Tawi and wetlands are challenged with pollution and forests are facing denudation as such city needs to look into devising appropriate strategies that will target the improvement of these ecosystems.
“Tree cover assessment of Jammu city shows higher proportion of coverage in the eastern sections and low to moderate in the northern fringe. Rest of the city has almost negligible tree cover and the city administrators are required to look into developing native tree green belts along roadsides, avenues and parks especially along the central and southern areas of the city”, officers said, adding “Jammu Municipal Corporation is required to look into forging partnerships with NGOs working on environmental based activities especially with a focus on biodiversity. Moreover, academic institutions like SKUAST-Jammu and Jammu University can support the city with developing and maintaining biodiversity inventories”.
Similarly, recommendations have been made in the index for the Srinagar Smart City.
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