New guidelines to mark no-mining zone in forests

Forests with rich bio-diversity, good hydrological potential and livelihood support for locals should be declared inviolate (free) from mining, an environment ministry committee has told the government.

Updated on: Sep 2, 2012, 24:19:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Forests with rich bio-diversity, good hydrological potential and livelihood support for locals should be declared inviolate (free) from mining, an environment ministry committee has told the government.

The committee headed by environment secretary Tishyarakshit Chatterjee was constituted by a Group of Ministers after it scrapped the go-no-go policy for coal mining in dense forests saying the ministry should come out with norms for mining in “pristine” forest areas.

The committee, in its final report, which has been submitted to the Planning Commission, has recommended eight parameters to evaluate forests before allowing mining.

If the forest is ranked high on five of the eight parameters, the ministry has said, mining should not be allowed, meaning “no-mining zones” will increase as compared to the earlier go-no-go policy.

Aimed at protecting rich biodiversity and wildlife areas, the committee has also given a formula for indexing of wildlife, which will be done for the first time. The formula will help evaluate wildlife importance of each forest area. The formula has been devised by Indian Council for Forest and Research and India and Forest Research Institute of India.

Departing from the earlier go-no-go policy, the ministry wants the government to frame broad guidelines for mining in forest areas based on the committee’s recommendations.

“No-mining zone or inviolate area would be much more that the erstwhile no-go policy as per the recommendations,” a government official said.

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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