Thaindian News

New Delhi, July 15 (IANS) The Rs.11,200 crore (Rs.112 billion/$2.2 billion) released by the Supreme Court last week for compensatory afforestation will be used to improve the tree cover in six million hectares of degraded forest land all over India, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said here Wednesday.
The money will be sent to state governments, starting with 10 percent next week, he added. This huge sum has accumulated from the compensation that firms have to pay when the government agrees to divert forest land for some other purpose. It has been lying around in banks because there was no scheme to use this money.

Thanking the apex court for “breaking this seven-year deadlock”, Ramesh said: “No longer are the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the judiciary working at cross purposes. This ministry considers the judiciary partners in forestry and environmental management. I welcome judicial activism” in this field.

Court and ministry officials have now worked out a set of guidelines to use the CAMPA funds, as it is called. The Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) was set up in 2004.

Five states — Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra — that have had the maximum amount of forest land diverted will get 55 percent of the CAMPA funds.

Ramesh denied that there was any perverse incentive in this, saying that states that have not had their forest areas diverted “are either not getting any investment or do not have any forest land”. Still, such states will get priority when allocating the Rs.500 crore set aside for afforestation in this year’s budget, he added.

The minister said “forestry in India will get such a huge amount of resources for the first time”, pointing out that it got Rs.8,200 crore in the entire Tenth Five Year Plan of 2002-07.

Calling the Supreme Court ruling a “historic breakthrough”, Ramesh said projects funded by CAMPA would “focus on protection and regeneration of natural forest areas”, including protection of wildlife under schemes including Project Tiger.

Under the guidelines prepared to use these funds, there would be three state-level committees — a governing body chaired by the chief minister, a steering committee chaired by the chief secretary and an executive committee chaired by the state’s Principal Chief Conservator of Forests.

Ramesh said the third group would actually propose and implement the forestry projects, and would work in association with local government institutions and voluntary organisations.

The central ministry would work only in an advisory capacity, he added, and the monitoring would be in the hands of a committee set up by the apex court earlier.