Forest Officers need to be 'voice of voiceless', act as trustees not owners of country's vast natural resources: Bhupender Yadav

Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav on Monday said that the forest officers as the voice of the voiceless need to work with an approach that is earnestly humane and sensitive to the aspirations and needs of the local community.

The Minister was virtually addressing the 64 Indian Forest Service (IFS) Probationer Trainees of the 2020 Batch being trained at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, Dehradun.

Addressing the young officers, Yadav said that the country under the current national leadership is aspiring for transformative advancement on all fronts of development while simultaneously dealing with challenges and crisis on different environmental frontiers and their manifestations viz. climate change, land degradation, pollution and biodiversity loss, and hence their role in the present era becomes even more important in taking forward and practising sustainable development.

The Environment Minister highlighted the commitments and targets for carbon sequestration, zero-carbon emission dateline, the proportion of solar power and other environmentally efficient sources in the energy mix, conservation of biodiversity, combating desertification and restoration of degraded land etc. and asked the officers to come forward with creative and innovative ideas to achieve them.

He reiterated, that as empowered, capable and competent workforce of the government system, the young IFS officers have also to be pro-actively Community-centric/Citizen oriented and facilitator in approach in dealing with the community in forest landscapes in their jurisdiction, and also other citizens.

The probationers were also addressed by the Minister of State Ashwini Kumar Choubey who said that there are many areas of interaction with the community residing in forest landscapes and other people, where an empathetic, responsive, facilitation approach has to be the mainstay of the conduct and functional discharge of duties and this whole process requires utmost sincerity and citizen-centric approach with a humane approach.

( With inputs from ANI )

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