Moef constitute committee to define inviolate areas

The environment ministry will re-define forests areas for declaring them inviolate (out of bound) for industrial projects.

Updated on: May 31, 2012, 22:30:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The environment ministry will re-define forests areas for declaring them inviolate (out of bound) for industrial projects.

A committee headed by secretary environment T Chatterjee has been constituted to identify the forest areas in India where industrial activity is likely to be prohibited.

A Group of Ministers headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had scrapped the go, no-go policy for coal mining in forest areas. It, however, agreed to declare “pristine” forest areas as inviolate on insistence of environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and asked environment ministry to come up with recommendations in this regard.

Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan informed the group of ministers on Wednesday that the committee will soon commence work to formulate a scientific formula to identify inviolate forest areas.

The Forest Survey of India (FSI), which does satellite mapping of trees, will be assisting the committee in identifying dense areas, which needs to be conserved for its rich bio-diversity and wildlife.

Government sources said that national parks and sanctuaries are likely to be covered under the ambit of the new inviolate areas. The minister reportedly told the GoM that industrial activity in the protected areas should not be allowed.

The GoM asked the ministry to speed up the work of the committee and submit its report as soon as possible. Although the committee has been constituted it is yet to start its work on identifying inviolate forest areas for industrial activity.

However, the GoM approved two major mining projects – Mahan and Chhattrasal --- in thick forest areas. Environment group Greenpeace, however, termed the decision as bad for locals, whose forest rights have been ignored.

Green tribunal stays MoEF decision allowing filling of Maheshwar dam.

The National Green Tribunal on Thursday restrained the Madhya Pradesh government from filling water in Maheshwar Dam up to 154 meters till further orders.

A bench headed by NGT chief Justice S Naidu brushed aside the opposition of Environment ministry and project proponent S Kumar group against the plea of local villagers that submergence will lead to “irreparable damage to life and livelihood.”

“What is this? You are opposing an status quo order just before the vacations (of courts) are to begin... Sorry gentleman. We will say don't fill it (the dam reservoir)," Justice Naidu said. "It (the dam) is not going to run away. It is not a run away project. You are not producing electricity. You only want to experiment," the bench said.

The Maheshwar dam, the country's first privately-financed 400 MW hydro power project is one of the big dams of the Narmada Valley Development Project, which entails construction of 30 big and 135 mid-size dams in the Narmada valley.

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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