Ecosystem for wildlife: green ministry no to SC panel plans

A committee headed by environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan on Thursday rejected the recommendations of a Supreme Court panel to dilute guidelines for declaring safe homes for wildlife in as many as 668 national parks and sanctuaries in the country. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 31, 2012, 23:16:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A committee headed by environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan on Thursday rejected the recommendations of a Supreme Court panel to dilute guidelines for declaring safe homes for wildlife in as many as 668 national parks and sanctuaries in the country.

The standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife rejected the recommendations of the court's Central Empowered Committee which wanted the eco-sensitive zones (ESZ) around the parks from present 10 km to a maximum of two km, thus paving a way for more industrial activity.

The committee had given its recommendations on the ground that state governments were reluctant to notify the ministry's 2011 ESZ guidelines as it would restrict developmental activity around the zones.

The court had sought ministry's reply on the committee's report which had divided national parks into four categories.

The CEC has brought the limit of eco-sensitive zones from 10 km to a maximum of two km for category A national parks having area of more than 500 sq km. Only 73 of 668 parks fall under this category.

For category B, parks with an area between 200 sq km and 500 sq km, the zone will be 1 km. As many as 115 parks fall under this category.

In case of category C, with 85 parks between 100 and 200 sq km, the CEC had suggested that the zones should be up to 500 metres. In D category parks, where a majority of parks (346) having area less than 100 sq km, the eco sensitive zone will be up to 100 metres.

"The standing committee has rejected the CEC recommendations," a senior ministry official told HT. The issue was raised by the non-official members of the panel who objected to a blanket policy on declaring eco-sensitive zones and wanted a site-specific policy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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