Kashmir is perhaps known more as ‘Paradise on Earth’ with the innumerable epithetic allures; but this paradise is afflicted with an ever crying problem of reduced forest cover.
Undoubtedly, a very important aspect for regulating climate, protecting biodiversity, and nurturing the livelihoods of crores, forests in Kashmir create precious spaces in the ecosystem.
Climate change with man-ravaged deforestation today ravages this paradise of the world. The Increased forest cover of this region is indeed not a choice but an urgent need for environmental sustainability, economy, and preservation of flora and fauna unique to the valley.
Natural and economic resource sources of Kashmir are forests. Thousands earn income and employment from the forest-based industries that stretch from timber to medicinal plants and into NTFPs such as mushrooms, herbs, and berries.
The state would, therefore, be able to uplift the standards of the people living in or around these forest-based communities without harming their health and social ethos through creating sustainable harvest methods and value added occupations.
While tourism develops in Kashmir, this will also contribute to the much needed positive effects to an economy because ecotourism and forestry coalesce.
Forests in Kashmir have always supplemented income, culture, and natural resources. In due course, emerging deforestation trends have severely affected the landscape through illegal logging, land encroachment, and urbanization.
Planting in Kashmir is a long term multidimensional approach. The key components are government initiatives focused upon the activities of afforestation and reforestation. This may include any restoration of degraded forests; further plantation of new trees may come through establishment of protected areas.
It is important that community participation should be availed in this process. The participation by the local communities should be active, especially those depending on forests as a source of fuel-wood, fodder, and timber in the afforestation and conservation effort.
Thus, Kashmir can reclaim its green legacy and assure a better and stronger future for the coming generations. But that does not only demand the efforts from an end, but from all stakeholders, that is, government agencies, environmental organizations, local communities, and the private sector.
