Rs 46k-cr grant for Green Mission

The Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change on Tuesday approved Rs 46,000 crore National Mission for Green India aimed at increasing forest cover by five million hectares by 2020 and providing financial incentives to the states to implement the watershed Forest Rights Act (FRA).

Updated on: Feb 24, 2011, 24:08:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change on Tuesday approved Rs 46,000 crore National Mission for Green India aimed at increasing forest cover by five million hectares by 2020 and providing financial incentives to the states to implement the watershed Forest Rights Act (FRA).

The objective of the mission to be implemented by the environment ministry is to improve livelihood of three million forest dependant households and increase carbon sequestration of 50-60 million tonnes by 2020.

The mission is one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2009 to help India fight climate change through adaptation and mitigation measures.

Over Rs 46,000 crore will be spent through the mission in next 10 years, including existing funds available with the ministry for the forestry sector.

What is central to the new mission is the Forest Rights Act, environment minister Jairam Ramesh said. "FRA compliance as embodied in FRA 2006 has been made a precondition for release of funds to implementation agencies," said a presentation made to the Prime Minister's Council on Tuesday.

The mission will be implemented through committees set up by the Gram Sabha under the FRA. Even the 10 lakh revamped Forest Management Committees will be placed under the gram sabhas.

It is apparently for the first time that FRA implementation has been made must for an environment ministry programme.

The mission also aims to provide employment to youth from tribal and forest dwellers to be appointed as foresters through gram sabhas. These young foresters will help the state forest departments in implementing the mission.

The mission will have five sub-missions aims to provide alternate energy sources to villages, provide Rs 15-20 lakh for each of 30,000 villages in forests, initiate programmes to end human animal conflict, promote community conservation of 14,000 sacred grooves and protect areas of hydrological importance.

The mission's outcome will be monitored through community participation and through satellite based systems, the minister said. Also, social audit as enforced in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is must for mission implementation.

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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