Climate action now 'compulsion' for Jammu Kashmir: Omar Abdullah

Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Thursday said responding to climate change is no longer optional for J&K, describing it as a “compulsion” for the Union Territory in the wake of increasingly erratic weather patterns.

Speaking in the Assembly during a reply to the discussion on Demands for Grants, Abdullah stressed the need for a structured, institutional mechanism to study and tackle climate risks specific to the region. He proposed the creation of a dedicated department to examine climate change and its impacts on J&K.

Referring to last year’s extreme weather — including intense rainfall that caused widespread damage as well as drought-related agricultural losses — the chief minister said the experience had underscored the urgency of climate preparedness.

“If seen from one perspective, climate response has become a compulsion for us. Just look at the situation last year — the damage caused by heavy rains and the losses due to drought,” he said. “In this context, how we can adapt our budgeting process to address climate change is an important question.”

He informed the House that the government has already established a fund for climate change mitigation and allocated a corpus for the purpose. However, he maintained that financial provisions alone would not suffice without clearly defined administrative responsibility.

Abdullah referred to interventions by CPI(M) MLA M.Y. Tarigami, who has repeatedly advocated the introduction of a separate climate budget since the beginning of the current Budget session and had even moved a cut motion on the issue.

While assuring that suggestions from Tarigami and other members would be examined, Abdullah argued that the first step should be to formally assign climate-related responsibilities to a specific department.

“As of today, no department has a defined responsibility to carry out an exercise on climate change,” he said. “Before even framing a climate budget, at the very least we should assign a department the responsibility to study what climate change actually is, whether it is affecting J-K, and if so, how its impacts can be reduced.”

He indicated that once a comprehensive assessment is conducted and institutional accountability is fixed, the government would move towards more targeted budgetary interventions to build resilience across sectors.

Tarigami has been pressing for a distinct climate budget, arguing that Jammu and Kashmir’s ecological fragility makes it more vulnerable than many other parts of the country.

“As far as this region is concerned, it remains more affected by adverse climatic conditions than other areas,” he had said, urging the government to elevate climate change to a governance priority and allocate dedicated resources for mitigation and adaptation.

The exchange in the Assembly reflects a growing recognition within J&K’s political leadership that climate volatility — from flash floods to prolonged dry spells — is reshaping both development planning and fiscal priorities in the Himalayan region.

With PTI inputs