Training on Forest Ecosystem Services and Incentive-Based Mechanisms for Himachal and Uttarakhand

16 Dec, 2021

The ‘Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystem Services’ project is working towards strengthening the Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand forest departments and integrating the Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) approach in their management systems, with an emphasis on water availability. One of the primary steps under the project is to orient different stakeholders on FES and their management.

Training sessions were conducted for the senior officials of the Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand Forest Departments (HPFD and UKFD) on the concepts of FES and Incentive-Based Mechanisms (IBMs) from 24-26 November and 13-15 December 2021, respectively. Over 10 officials from the HPFD participated in the training sessions via hybrid mode at Chandigarh, and 14 officials from the UKFD joined in virtually. The sessions were conducted by an external trainer from Germany, Ms Isabel Renner. She commenced the sessions with an introduction to the FES approach and different classification schemes to classify various FESs. Following this, she focused on the types of incentives and different policy instruments.

The objective of the training sessions was to strengthen the existing knowledge of the forest department officials regarding the rationale and theoretical foundations of FES and IBMs and build up their skills for implementation. The training courses followed an active learning approach based on a combination of inputs, discussions and group work done by the participants and were thematically subdivided into the following:

  • Basic concept of FES and their management
  • Introduction to incentive-based mechanisms

At the end of the sessions, participants could understand the main characteristics of FES and related management issues and had an overview of tools and methods for integrating ecosystem services into forest management planning and its application. They also understood the conceptual basis of IBMs and recognise the conditions and success factors based on good practice examples.

©GIZ/Jyoti Kashyap

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About the project

Integrating the lessons from HP-FES, a follow-up project on ‘Sustainable Management of Forest Ecosystem Services (FES)’ is being implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, State Forest Departments of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and GIZ India on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It aims to strengthen forest and agroforest management to integrate the Forest Ecosystem Services approach with a focus on water availability. Read More

For more information contact: biodiv.india@giz.de

 
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