Green ministry out to help industry

The environment ministry is on an industrial overdrive, with rules being changed for faster clearance of projects at the cost of the environment.

Updated on: May 28, 2012, 02:37:36 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry is on an industrial overdrive, with rules being changed for faster clearance of projects at the cost of the environment.

While the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife will lose its power to examine projects in tiger and elephant corridors, a sectoral forest advisory committee will be allowed to decide on diversion of forest land and projects even in dense forests. These are some of the changes that the environment ministry has brought in to dispel its image of being a roadblock to industrial development, and ensure easier approval for industries.

The ministry has silently excluded projects coming up in tiger and elephants corridors from the purview of the standing committee, which has not met for almost six months reportedly because the non-official members are refusing to adhere to the government line.

“The views of the National Tiger Conservation Authority and Project Elephant are taken before deciding on projects in these areas,” said a ministry official, explaining that the standing committee causes a lot of delay while deciding these projects.

The ministry is also likely to agree to a suggestion of a Group of Ministers headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee to set up several forest advisory committees for speeding up the project approval rate. The GoM had wanted the FAC to work on the lines of about 10 sectoral-level Expert Appraisal Committees (EAC).

The move is, however, being opposed by non-official members of FAC who believe that it will dilute the mandate of the single FAC, constituted under the Forest Conservation Act, to ensure the protection of forests. The law provides for one advisory body, whose recommendations are not binding on the government.

The environment ministry is expected to inform the GoM on Wednesday that it will approve two key mining projects in dense forests — Chhatrasal and Mahan — with strict environmental conditions. It is also expected to inform the GoM regarding its proposed inviolate areas for mining in dense forests.

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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