10 September 2007The Times of IndiaNitin Sethi
The UPA government is set to fast-track a mega project that could well lead to a re-greening of the country. The Green India project, as it's called, aims to afforest more than 6 million hectares — around 2% of the country's total area — with the help of people in the villages. The project is expected to be put before the Cabinet sometime this week. The ambitious plan aims to use more than Rs 5,000 crore collected through a Supreme Court directive for conservation to fund the afforestation. This kitty will be used to generate more funds via NABARD as well as leverage the carbon credit market for additional resources. While the government has not completely killed the plan mooted earlier by the environment ministry to contract forest land to industry to fund afforestation plans, it has instead mooted this pro-people route to green India. The size of the plan can be measured by the fact that in the past three years, the government has spent less than Rs 1,000 crore on afforestation. The afforestation target for 2006-07 is just 18.60 lakh hectares. The government will be able to channel this money through more than one lakh village level joint forest management committees that are at present the via media for much of the afforestation efforts. This will provide villagers income from labour as well as a share in the produce. var RN = new String (Math.random()); var RNS = RN.substring (2,11); var b2 = ''; if (doweshowbellyad==1) bellyad.innerHTML = b2;
