As a follow up to the visit of Regional Vice President of the World Bank who visited the state in the month of March, 2022, the World Bank is keen to engage with state and to support the Government of Himachal Pradesh in making the necessary institutional, policy and regulatory ifts that are needed to: (i) implement priorities as listed in the State’s Climate Change Action Plan; (ii) enhance resilience and adaptive capacity for climate-related hazards; and (iii) strengthen sustainable management of natural resources, particularly forest and water resources. The World Bank Mission comprising of Mr. Pyu Dogra, Senior Environmental Specialist, Mission Coordinator on behalf of the World Bank, Mr. Deepak Singh , Lead Disaster Management Specialist, Mr. Adar Kumar , Program Leader , Sustainable Development, Mr. Tapas Paul . Lead Environment Specialist, Mr. Pablo Benitez, Senior Environmental Economist, Mr. Joop Stoutjesdijk , Lead Water Specialist or Ms Anju Gaur, Senior Water Resources Specialist visited the State on 25th & 26th July, 2022 in order to explore the possible terms of engagement to develop a programme for funding from the Bank.
R.D. Dhiman, Chief Secretary, chaired the World Bank mission meetings wherein all Secretaries including HODs of all departments participated. He said the State would be interested for finance for a variety of green and grey infrastructure measures, including afforestation, reforestation, forest rehabilitation, and small-scale erosion control, flood control, and landslide control works upstream; combined with resilient infrastructure systems mid and downstream for water storage, irrigation, flood and sediment control, and the rehabilitation of rural roads to strengthen climate and disaster resilience. He said these green and grey infrastructure investments can be combined with support for the adoption of sustainable management practices in agricultural and pasture lands, forests including support for sustainable and climate-smart production, selected value chain enhancements, and livelihood diversification activities with integrated landscape approach. The Chief Secretary said that ortly a Mission Resilience will be launched in the State to take forward this programme with focus on Climate Change.
Prabodh Saxena, Addl. Chief Secretary (Env., S&T, Finance, Planning) informed that the World Bank has supported the State for green initiatives and as such the Government of Himachal Prade intends to move from Green Growth to Climate Resilient Green Himachal. The Department of Environment, Science Technology (DEST) intends to scale up green growth initiatives towards sustained inclusive Green resilient Himachal in a integrated manner with all Stakeholder departments. The initial concept based on above mentioned engagement themes DEST has proposed a participatory planning process to incorporate inputs from different stakeholder groups, allowing for the coordination and integration of solutions among various government agencies and between government and local stakeholders with a concept on Landscape approach to develop any basin of the state.
This project will adopt an integrated landscape management approach in the river basins to achieve these objectives through synergies between green and grey infrastructure, while balancing between urgent needs and long-term benefits. Using River basins as proofs of concept, the project will set in motion a regional program for landscape resilience and sustainable recovery in lagging rural areas. Lalit Jain, Director Department of Env., Sci. & Technology said that this programme with World Bank will help State to get Financial and Technical support to scale-up the Landscape river basin vide project approaches in very coordinated manner including all priority areas and ultimately developing a regional strategy for landscape resilience and sustainable recovery. Mr. Jain said that project concept note has been discussed with the World Bank Team looking at following areas in a collaborative landscape management approach:
- Catchment conservation feasibility (e.g. protection status, level of threats, size and ecological vulnerability, management capacity and commitment to conservation and new models of participatory natural resource management of state governments and local communities etc.),
- Impact of climate change on natural hazards, the focus is on hazards exacerbated by hydro meteorological phenomena- Varied opportunity for Climate adaptability and mitigation actions for Nature based solutions to promote green growth through efficient environmental management and – effective eco system services for hazard mitigation.
He further said that the necessary institutional capacity building for implementing such strategy; as well as all related project management activities, including monitoring and evaluation and environmental and social risk management with basin approach will be taken for building resilient and green Himachal.
