Projects near wildlife zones can skip expert nod for Rs 43k/hectare

NEW DELHI: In a first, the government is allowing projects around wildlife areas in the country for a price — Rs 43,000 per hectare — without waiting for an approval

Published on: Oct 13, 2016, 11:37:56 IST

By Chetan Chauhan

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NEW DELHI: In a first, the government is allowing projects around wildlife areas in the country for a price — Rs 43,000 per hectare — without waiting for an approval of a panel having wildlife experts. And that has left the activists aghast.

The environment ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) —mandated to allow cutting of tress — has allowed three projects this year close to the wildlife areas including a tiger and an elephant habitat. Normally, the standing committee of the national board for wildlife headed by the environment minister approves projects in and around wildlife areas but the FAC did not refer them to it for consent.

“It was not needed,” an environment ministry official said, adding that “a rule change last year gave FAC power to approve projects outside the wildlife areas” by charging wildlife management fee.

The amendment was part of green reform undertaken by former environment minister Prakash Javadekar to speed up green approvals as part of National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) bid to improve its ranking in ease of doing business.

The FAC has decided that a project developer will have to pay Rs 43,000 per hectare of forest land diverted for wildlife management. This is in addition to the higher fee — based on value and forest density — they have to pay for cutting trees.

An anaylsis by the Delhi-based advocacy group the EIA Resource Centre showed that the wildlife levy has been imposed for the first time on three projects in 2016.

In August 2016, the FAC allowed mining in Odisha’s Sukinda mineral zone that cuts through a corridor used by endangered species such as elephants, pangolin and sloth bear.

Another mining approval was given to Tata Steel close to an elephant habitat in Keonjhar district of Odisha, the minutes of the FAC meeting held in March 2016 shows. The approval was given despite objections by local wildlife activists.

The third one came in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand in February 2016 where 252 MW hydel project is coming up in ecologically sensitive Himalayan region. The ministry’s regional office in Lucknow pointed out that the region has rare animals like Himalayan Tahar, black bear, snow leopard and musk deer but the FAC approved the project after imposing the levy.

Pushp Jain of EIA Resource Centre that appraised all projects approved by FAC in 2016 said the concern for wildlife has been lost in a bid to give faster approval to projects. “High intensity projects such as mining and hydel disturbs wildlife leading to inbreeding,” he said.

The ministry, however, believes the new fund will give incentive to wildlife conservation by forest departments which face fund crunch along with speeding up project approval rate.

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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