With India’s protected areas designed at a time when climate change was “hardly a criterion” for wildlife conservation, the National Wildlife Action Plan (NWAP) 2017-2031 states that it “recognises the concerns relating to climate change impacts on wildlife.”
Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan released the document on Monday. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, however, only released basic points of the plan and specified that there are 103 conservation actions and 250 projects in the final plan, of which seven conservation actions and 11 projects relate to climate change.
The draft version of the plan, released in February 2016, had also highlighted 11 projects on climate change and indicated that “region-specific projections of future climate change impacts” will be the basis for redesigning India’s protected areas (PAs), and also take into account future species migration patterns.
“…Species are likely to migrate upwards on mountains with increased warming; thus in PAs located on mountainous areas, it would be prudent to consider extending PA boundaries to higher elevations even if these are presently barren or under snow cover,” the draft plan stated. It recommended “assisted migration of wildlife” and “anticipatory planting along ecological gradients”, as climate change is expected to result in die-offs of certain tree species that are unable to adapt to newer environmental conditions.
Prof R Sukumar from the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, who was involved in drafting the chapter on climate change, said the government will have to take into consideration how temperatures and rainfall patterns are going to change across the country.
“There will be a process of adaptation to change where both plant and animal species will have to migrate due to climate change. This also requires moving from an individual approach of protected areas to a broader landscape approach,” he told The Indian Express.
Sukumar said, “It will be insufficient for the government to only focus on protected areas. Naturally, animals are moving to private land, and it is up to the government to make sure the land use in between protected areas are wildlife-friendly. For this, people who live in these areas have to be strongly incentivised.”
He also suggested that funds under CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority) should be used to incentivise people’s participation in wildlife conservation and not just be used for afforestation efforts.
MoEF Secretary A N Jha had said that the government has Rs 45,000 crore as CAMPA funds that the Centre plans to distribute among states for management of their forest areas.
NWAP chairman J C Kala told The Indian Express that the plan also took note of rising human-animal conflict due to shrinking and fragmenting habitats. “Communities have traditionally used certain ways to manage conflict with animals and we were thinking of popularising some of these methods,” he said.
Officials said that the current plan builds upon the two previous NWAPs — from 1983-2001 and 2002-2016 — that had a protected area-centric approach to wildlife conservation.
