Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
6.CONCLUSION
With a change in biodiversity, many rivers may lose some of their economic value.
A more effective adaptation strategy would focus on maintaining and restoring
watershed health and resiliency, because such systems are more likely to provide
a sustained flow of ecological services in face of ongoing and future disturbances,
including those associated with climate change (Baron 2002). The types of actions
that might be implemented will differ dramatically in different landscapes –
they will depend on dominant watershed processes, key watershed services, and
principal threats to those services. They could include: 49
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Protecting and restoring riparian forests to reduce stream temperatures and
increase the quality of aquatic habitats.
Improving or decommissioning roads to reduce erosion, increase floodplain
connectivity, decrease peak flows, and reduce temperature impacts.
Restoring meadows, wetlands, and floodplains to improve ecological
continuity, increase water storage, reduce flood flows, increase local lateseason
summer low flows, and decrease stream temperatures. Restoring
India will be able to meet its ambitious targets to tackle climate change and climate
variability through targeted schemes and programmes, like those mentioned in
the INDC report to UNFCCC.
In 2015, the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways (MoRTH) formulated the
Green Highways (Plantation and Maintenance) Policy, 2015 wherein a 140,000
km long “tree-line” along both sides of national highways will be developed over
five years. This policy came in the wake of the ‘poor quality and lack of maintenance
of green cover along most national highways’. 51 . The Green Highway policy links
to the MNREGA scheme, and takes into account soil suitability, commercially
viable tree species/ fruit bearing trees and involves the Panchayats in the area.
It is proposed that tree plantation along the river banks, as and where feasible,
should be accorded similar or higher priority and should be suitably promoted on
similar lines as the Green Highways (Plantation and Maintenance) Policy, 2015.
Such a policy will contribute to both the adaptation and mitigation strategy for
addressing climate change in the country.
Annexures
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