Thaindian News

New Delhi, March 26 (IANS) Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh Saturday called for real-time monitoring of forests in order to increase the quality of green cover in the country.

“I propose a fundamental shift in mindset from our traditional focus of merely increasing the quantity of our forest cover, towards increasing the quality of our forest cover and improving provision of ecosystem services,” he told a conference on Green India Mission (GIM) held here.

The GIM is part of the country’s plans to fight climate change under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

It projects an ambitious target of 10 million hectares of forest cover by 2020 at a cost of Rs.460 billion (Rs.46,000 crore/$10 billion). Ramesh suggested following the Brazilian model which is based on real-time monitoring instead of expenditure monitoring.

“We need to take a holistic view of greening, not merely focus on plantations. The implementation of programme will be done by gram sabhas with the technical and managerial support of the forest service personnel,” he said.

GIM will bring an opportunity for revolutionising the system of monitoring as a family of forestry satellites dedicated to monitoring green cover will be launched soon and the Indian space agency is working towards it.

T. Chatterjee, secretary, environment ministry, said: “Despite its (GIM’s) climate change related ideas, it is primarily an anti-poverty programme. It addresses livelihood problems of about 15 million poor people.”

“It will help in implementing the Forest Rights Act. Its success will depend on support from panchayats and gram sabhas which are the basic units of administration at the grass roots level,” he said.