The two-day meeting of forest bureaucracy that concluded on Saturday decided that States will not get fund from Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) in one go. The effective rules for disbursement of the huge unspent corpus of about `42,000 crore fund will be finalised by this year-end.
However, as per the initial indications, sources said that the share of a State will go to the affected districts in a phased manner — in areas where the forests had been diverted in the past for non-forest use.
The participating forest officials from across the country according to sources are learnt to have agreed to a model where second installment of the fund would be released only after the Environment Ministry gets utilisation certificate of the previous installment, in the same manner as the disbursement of the rest of the Central funds in the country.
Accordingly, the upcoming rules will also have provisions to make forest bureaucracy accountable for any lapse by the State in carrying out the activities as per the scheduled deadlines. Accordingly, the States may get first installment of their share before the end of the current financial year by March 31, 2017.
The new legislation which was enacted in early August is meant to compensate States for diversion of forests for non-forest uses like industrial, mining and infrastructure projects. The money given to States is supposed to be utilised to mitigate impact of diversion of the forest land.
As per the norms, any user agency which diverts forest land for non-forest purpose is, currently required to deposit prescribed amount under CAMPA fund. However, the amount accumulated over the years with this ad-hoc body remains unspent.
Stressing on the importance of upcoming rules in connection with CAMPA, the environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave said it would pave the way for effective utilization of large sum of funds, fulfilling nation’s green objectives of taking forward environment and development have hand-in-hand.