Centre's move to make process of industrial development easier in states like Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra
In a bid to address the problem of finding land for compensatory afforestation while giving green clearances to industrial projects, the Union ministry of environment and forest (MoEF) has now asked all states to prepare land banks to minimise delays.
"All state governments have been asked to prepare a land bank of degraded, non-degraded and non-forest land for the purpose of compensatory afforestation in lieu of forest land to be diverted for non-forest purposes," a senior environment ministry official told dna.
"This would ensure that delays in giving clearance to projects are minimised… because many a time projects are stuck at state government level for want of land where compensatory afforestation has to take place," explained the senior environment ministry official.
The move is among a series of measures that MoEF has taken to streamline green clearance process in the last few months as they have been repeatedly criticised by the industry over the last few years stating that delay in green clearances has stalled India's growth.
"Things are becoming easier and smoother so that the industry would not need to come to ministry at all for clearances. All policy decisions and simplification of procedures are aimed at decentralising the process of green clearances. All instructions are due to the Modi factor and all orders have been coming from top," the senior ministry official said.
Besides the land bank, the ministry is developing a GIS-based decision support system to facilitate informed, speedy and transparent decision on Forest clearance applications.
"All forest cover, their type, landscape, parameter and any information related to any forest block will be mapped by FSI … This will ensure that fast decisions in forest clearances as it will aid in field surveys," the senior MoEF official added.
Apart from this, the environment ministry has also relaxed several rules to help state governments.
"50 percent compensatory afforestation has to be done in non-forest land and states having more than 50 percent forest cover are allowed to do afforestation on degraded forest land as they face problems finding non-forest land. Now this has been reduced to 33 percent and thus states like Chhattisgarh will benefit. Several projects were delayed because of searching for non-forest land and delay in projects were causing lot of problems," the senior MoEF official further said.
About 21 percent of geographical area of India is under forest cover and every year on an average 35,000 hectare of forest land is diverted for non-forest purpose for mining, dams, roads and highways and other infrastructure projects.
Since 1980, around 11,89,294 hectares of forest land has been converted for non-forestry purposes after giving approvals to 23,511 proposals. Of these, maximum approvals were given in Madhya Pradesh which is followed by Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
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