Chief Minister Omar Abdullah recently put it plainly: Jammu and Kashmir’s limited revenue leaves the government with less money to invest in projects that create jobs and boost incomes.

Officials nodded along, because everyone in the room already knew it. What almost none of them said is that the region already owns an asset large enough to change that math. It just isn’t on the books.

That limitation is what the International Conference on Nature-Based Solutions for Enhanced Climate Resilience and Livelihoods in the Himalayas, set to run August 3-6, 2026, at the Islamic University of Science and Technology, intends to close. 

Decision-makers, researchers, financiers, development partners and civil society groups will sit down together and try to push this idea past the seminar-room stage. 

The question on the table isn’t academic: how does Jammu and Kashmir build a more competitive economy by investing in its own landscape?

Budget season keeps posing a version of the same problem. 

Officials want better public services, faster growth, more jobs and stronger defenses against shocks, all with money that keeps falling short. 

Climate change has made that problem sharper. 

Floods tear up roads, bridges, irrigation systems and homes. Springs run dry, so water supply costs climb. Urban flooding shuts down businesses and public services. Soil erosion cuts farm output. Heat and dirty air drag down public health and labour productivity. 

Officials respond the way governments almost always do: rebuild after the fact, or pour concrete into bigger flood walls and drainage systems. 

Those investments still matter, but they treat only half the balance sheet, because a second form of infrastructure has been sitting there the whole time, uncounted because nobody priced........

© Kashmir Observer