Thaindian News

New Delhi, Mar 26(ANI): Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, on Saturday launched the Green India Mission, which targets five million hectares of new forest cover and five million hectares of improved forest cover.

At a seminar titled ‘Brainstorming Session on Green India Mission’ in the national capital, Ramesh said that the mission was different from the earlier programmes as it would rope in the village administration for its implementation with direct allocation of funds to them, instead of routing it through the forest departments concerned.

“This mission will be implemented by the Gram Sabhas (village local bodies) with the technical and managerial support of the Forest Departments. This is not money that is going to go into Forest Departments. This is money that is going to go to Gram Sabhas,” Ramesh said.

The Minister also said that the necessary machinery and managerial support system would be put in place to assist the village bodies.

Lamenting the country’s poor surveillance system for monitoring the forest resources, Ramesh said India planned to imitate the Brazilian model.

“Monitoring is absolutely essential. And we have no worthwhile system of monitoring today. Let us be very honest to ourselves. We must revolutionize our system of monitoring. I just sent the DG a couple of article on how the Brazilians their forestation and deforestation programmes and he has seen it. And he was as impressed with it as I was. We must learn from what the Brazilians are doing. They are doing real time monitoring,” he said.

Ramesh also said that India would be making satellites by the end of 2012 solely for the purpose of monitoring the forest cover in the country.

The Mission has a budgetary allocation of 200 billion rupees.

The mission will be implemented in the twelfth and thirteenth five-year plans and the year 2011-12 would be the preparatory year. (ANI)