Green funds for relocating people from wildlife areas

Dedicated money for developing green cover would now also be utilised for relocation of people from the tiger reserves and national parks. Chetan Chauhan reports. Into the wild

Updated on: May 28, 2013, 02:21:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Dedicated money for developing green cover would now also be utilised for relocation of people from the tiger reserves and national parks.

The environment ministry has approved a proposal of National Tiger Conservation Authority to provide money from the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) to relocate people living inside tiger reserves and other protected areas.

Around 1,78,000 families live inside protected areas including tiger reserves and are considered a threat to wildlife because of increasing man-animal conflict. The ministry’s latest data shows that 652 people were killed and around 17,000 injured in attacks by wild animals between 2002 and 2012. In retaliation, around 100 ferocious animals were also killed during the period.

In a bid to check this conflict, there had been a government scheme to give compensation of up to Rs 10 lakh for a family willing to relocate in 41 tiger reserves. The fund provided in the 11th five year plan (2007-08) of around Rs 600 crore for tiger reserves had fallen awfully short for quick relocation.

Therefore, the ministry decided that the money from CAMPA can be provided to the state governments for relocation of people from around 600 protected areas. Some of the state governments have already submitted proposals for the relocation plan.

As per the CAMPA guidelines, each state government can get up to Rs 1,000 crore every year from the fund corpus depending on the projects they submit. The change, if approved by the Supreme Court, would mean most of the state governments would be able to utilise the limit.

What remains to be seen is whether the court approves the ministry’s proposal as the guidelines does not explicitly provide for relocation of people from forest areas in the name of creating inviolate wildlife zones.

The guidelines say the money provided can be used for assisted natural regeneration, infrastructure development, wildlife conservation and protection in addition to compensatory afforestation. But, relocation is not mentioned. Ministry officials, however, says that relocation of people would result in wildlife conservation and protection.

The standing committee of National Board for Wildlife has asked the government to fast track the decision to permit use of certain percentage of Campa funds for the relocation purpose. The NTCA has supported the committee’s view and had submitted a detailed proposal in this regard.

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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