Panchayats roped in to expand green cover country-wide
New Delhi (PTI): In a bid to cover 33 per cent of the country's geographical area with trees, the Environment Ministry is fine-tuning its ambitious scheme of planting trees on non-forest land with the help of panchayats.
The Centrally-sponsored Rs 900 crore "Gram/Panchyat Van Yojna" (GVY) scheme, which is proposed to be implemented by National Afforestation and Eco-development Board (NAEB), will be discussed at the Expenditure Finance Committee meeting likely to be held soon.
After consultation with various ministries, the GVY will be sent to the Cabinet for its approval.
Under the scheme, panchayats will identify land in non-forest areas for planting trees and will be responsible for ensuring that the trees survive. In return, the villagers will get the right to use minor produce from the forests.
Those seeking to plant trees in their private land will also be given incentives, a senior environment ministry official told PTI.
In addition to providing free of cost seedlings, the landowner will be given an incentive grant of Rs 5 per surviving seedling after three years of planting subject to conditions.
A maximum of Rs 10,000 per hectare will be given provided at least 40 per cent of seedlings initially supplied to the landowner survive after three years of planting.
"The scheme has multiple advantages including enabling village institutions to create tree-based renewable biomass resources in the degraded lands, augment fuel and fodder supplies to rural society as well expand green cover to unutilised lands in rural areas," the official said.
The scheme which is expected to ensure "rich forest" in each panchayat by 2012 aims to facilitate Green Mission as pointed in National Action Plan on Climate Change which was unveiled by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year.
"As per the Mission, at least 33 per cent of the country's geographical area will be brought under plantation to take care of global warming threats as well improve the resilience of local communities for climate change adaptation," the official noted.
The scheme would be operated by NAEB which will set up a dedicated special cell for providing technical support and for operating the scheme at the national level.
The GVY project proposals in such villages where no work has been undertaken under the National Afforestation Programme (NAP) scheme will be given priority.
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