State to finalise CCA Plan by month-end

The draft Climate Change Action Plan prepared by the Orissa government, entailing an investment of Rs 17,000 crore, is set to be finalized by the end of this month.

The state government, which has posted the Action Plan on its website, will forward it to the Union ministry of environment and forests by June 25 after incorporating the comments of different stakeholders including the general public.

“The conveners of 11 working groups constituted for the preparation of the draft Action Plan will meet on Thursday and will analyze the comments received so far from the different stakeholders. We are very optimistic that the general public and the intellectuals will post their comments to the draft Action Plan on the state government's website”, Bhagirathi Behera, director (environment), Orissa government told Business Standard.

Orissa which is the first state to prepare the draft Climate Change Action Plan has proposed to put in place a Climate Change agency to ensure effective implementation of the plan. The Action Plan was released on June 5, the World Environment Day and is expected to help the state to move towards a carbon conscious and climate resilient state.

It may be noted that the state chief minister Naveen Patnaik had constituted a high-level coordination committee headed by the Chief Secretary to steer the preparation of the draft Action Plan. Eleven working groups were constituted on agriculture, coastal zones and disasters, energy, fisheries and animal resources, forestry, health, industry, mining, transport, urban planning and water resources.

For agriculture, the Action Plan has suggested a climate friendly agriculture policy, capacity building to cope with climate change, people centric watershed development programmes, developing water efficient micro irrigation methods as well as improving monitoring and surveillance techniques.

Other key priorities in the sector are developing sustainable soil, water and crop management practices, increasing the areas under perennial fruit plantation to help cope with uncertain weather patterns and undertaking more research on agricultural implications of climate change.