MoEF eases forest clearance

However,there is no lack of degraded forests,with almost 40 per cent of India’s total of 70 million hectare forest cover classified as such. Most of the degraded forests have extremely poor tree cover and are forests only in name.

Compensatory afforestation is a mandatory requirement for companies that seek forest land for their projects. The companies,in association with the state government,have to afforest an equivalent tract of non-forest land apart from paying money to the government’s compensatory afforestation fund in lieu of depleting forest cover.

The main reason for allowing compensatory afforestation only on non-forest land,wherever available,was to increase the forest cover as much as possible. However,Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recently argued that having good quality forests was more important than just increasing the area under forest cover.

“There is no scientific basis to say that India must have 33 per cent of its land under forest cover. A large part of our forests are of extremely bad quality. Improving them would yield the same benefit,” Jairam said.

Accordingly,at a recent interaction with the industry,he had floated this idea of including regeneration of degraded forests as valid afforestation programme. The suggestion was welcomed by the industry which has seen its projects often suffer on account of delays caused by such legal provisions.

The Steel Authority of India has already become the first beneficiary of the new relaxed rules. While giving the forest clearance to SAIL to mine iron ore from Chiria mines in Jharkhand,the ministry allowed the public sector company to use degraded forests for compensatory afforestation.

In fact,Jharkhand government had written to the Environment Ministry some time back requesting such a change in rule in view of the scarcity of land that can be put under forest cover. Jairam said he was open to considering similar requests from other states as well.