Govt to spend Rs 46,000 cr on vulnerable green areas

Vulnerability of Indian forests to climate change will be assessed and remedial measures will be adopted under the Rs 46,000 crore Green India Mission.

Updated on: Jun 14, 2011, 24:30:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Vulnerability of Indian forests to climate change will be assessed and remedial measures will be adopted under the Rs 46,000 crore Green India Mission.

In a note circulated for Cabinet approval to seek funds to make the mission operational, the environment ministry has proposed that parts of Indian forest, which are most vulnerable to climate change, will be identified using satellite mapping and on ground research.

"It is not possible to bring entire forest area under the Green India Mission as that sort of funds would not be available," a senior ministry official explained.

Therefore, the ministry wants to concentrate on vulnerable forest areas and make an effort to protect them from likely impact of climate change.

The Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, has identified seven vulnerability criteria for identification of forests based on forest diversity and density. The government also wants to cover all wildlife corridors, critical wildlife habitats, important water sources and biodiversity habitats in these special protection areas.

The mission is ministry's ambitious programme to increase forest cover by 5 million hectares and improve quality of another five million hectares of degraded forests. These 10 million hectares of forestland will be India's green lungs and key to sequester 50 to 60 million tones of additional CO2 by 2020.

In the note, the ministry has argued that maintaining some forest zones in different landscapes of India will be must to counter the challenges of climate change in the next 20-30 years.

"Both best and worst forest areas will be identified for protection under the mission," an official said.

The note also says that the current financial year will be utilized to prepare state action plans and set up a mission office within the ministry.

From the next financial year, the fund disbursement of approximately Rs 4,100 crore will start. The money will be provided to the state governments for specific jobs under the mission, which includes creation of a cadre of green volunteers.

The ministry has sought money from the Clean Energy Fund to make the mission operational from this financial year.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukerjee in his budget speech had announced special allocation to environment ministry for greening India.

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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