Green ministry likely to approve mining projects in Pench Satpuda tiger corridor

Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan has asked officials to clear the backlog of pending projects by the end of September, but wildlife activists are seeing red.

Updated on: Sep 19, 2017, 21:11:33 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan

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A panel of the Union environment ministry which will meet on Thursday for the fourth time in over a month to speed up project approval will consider three proposals to divest forest land from the Central India’s Pench Satpuda tiger corridor for mining. The panel normally meets once a month.

A tiger in Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Wildlife activists feel a likely government approval for mining projects in the Pench Satpuda tiger corridor will harm tiger protection efforts in central India. (HT PHOTO)

The frequent project approval committees meetings are part of environment minister Harsh Vardhan’s directive to decide on pending projects soon to clear the backlog.

Sources said the minister has asked the officials to place maximum proposals for consideration of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), the statutory and the wildlife panel, which he heads.

On Thursday, the ministry’s statutory body for diversion of forest land for development, the FAC, will be meeting for the fourth time in 41 days. Before August, the FAC used to meet only once a month, a norm for past many years.

Thursday’s meeting is crucial as three mining projects in Pench Satpuda tiger corridor that will lead to diversion of the 440 hectares of “dense and moderate” forest land will be examined. The government has cited country’s energy security and poverty alleviation as major reasons for approving these proposals.

Wildlife activists, however, differ and say the approval will harm tiger protection efforts in Central India.

“Maintaining tiger corridors in Satpuda landscape is utmost important for tiger conservation. The proposed mining projects and ancillary activities associated with it would certainly break the forest connectivity and also affect functionality of these tiger corridors,” said Kishor Rithe, President, Satpuda Foundation and former member of the ministry’s wildlife committee called Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL).

The public sector Hindustan Copper Limited’s underground mining proposal in Balaghat is just 7.5 kms away from Kanha tiger reserve, one of the most densely populated big cat habitats in the country. The second proposal is for underground mining in Jamuna and third is in the north-eastern part of Pench Satpuda valley.

Officials said that minister Vardhan has set September end as deadline to clear pending projects. The move is aimed at improving India’s ranking in ease of doing business, where slow environmental approvals are considered one of the biggest roadblocks.

On September 4, the wildlife panel delegated powers to the states to approve drinking water and optical fibre projects passing through the forest areas. The proposal was submitted by the Gujarat forest department.

The panel also approved an irrigation project in a green corridor connecting three tiger reserves --- Kawal in Telangana with Tadoba-Andhari in Maharashtra and Indravathi in Chhattisgarh. According to the minutes of the meeting, the panel cleared about 30 projects including mining, road and rail expansion and irrigation proposals. Some of the proposals were, however, deferred for want for information.

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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