The Green India Mission (GIM) part of India’s plan to fight climate change, is expected to take off after a two year’s gap. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) will soon approach the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) to seek approval to use rs 13,000 crore during 2012-17 towards the mission. The ambitious project that was slated to take off from 2011 had been stranded owing to paucity of funds.
According to sources in MoEF, the proposal to get funds for the Green India Mission is already underway. The Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) under the Department of Expenditure and the Ministry of Finance has already approved the mission with proposed expenditure of rs 13,000 crore during 12th (2012-17) plan and one year spillover in 13th Plan (2018-2023).
Earlier in 2011-12, rs 50 crore was released out of allocation made under the National Clean Energy Fund to the 21 States for preparatory activities to be undertaken under the mission. However, the project was left stranded. The sources pointed out that during the last two years, only preparatory activities like identification of landscapes, setting up of mission organisation, awareness, micro-plan preparation, baseline survey and preparation of perspective plan of the landscape could be done. The sources further said that convergence of funds has been sought with other schemes like the rural employment programme MNREGA and CAMPA aimed at promotion of afforestation and regeneration activities as a way of compensating for forest land diverted to non-forest uses.
The Ministry had also approached the Supreme Court for release of CAMPA funds to be utilised for the mission. The ambitious plan, one of the eight under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), aims at enhancing the forest cover by 10 million at a cost of rs 46,000 crore by 2020. It was cleared by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change in 2011 but no work could happen on the ground due to financial crunch.
The country presently has 23 per cent of its land under forest cover which is about 70 million hectares. The aim of GIM is to eventually raise this to 33 per cent with a coverage of 100 million hectares. It also focusses on improving eco-system services, including biodiversity, hydrological services and carbon sequestration, besides increasing income from forest-based livelihood for the forest communities.