Rules for Rs. 40,000 cr. forest fund to be ready in a month

Most of the money will be used by States to restock and improve degraded forests

The Environment Ministry will frame rules, within a month, to help States use a Rs. 40,000-crore corpus earmarked to restore forests.

Making these rules are a follow-up to the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill passed by Parliament in the monsoon session. The CAF Bill proposes to dispense the corpus that has, over the years, collected money from projects that have diverted forest land for infrastructure development.

“We have to move soon on this and that’s one of the reasons why State officials have gathered here,” said S.S. Negi, India’s top forest official. “We expect the draft rules to be ready within a month.”

Expansion of forests

Most Indian States stand to receive funds worth Rs. 6,000 crore per annum for conservation, protection, improvement and expansion of forest and wildlife resources.

According to the Environment Ministry, most of the money will be used to restock and improve degraded forest, which make up more than 40 % of the total forest cover of the country, and create more than 15-crore man days of direct employment.

Many of these jobs will be in tribal and backward areas. Apart from creation of direct employment, utilisation of these amounts will result in increased availability of timber and various other non-timber forest products, and will thus help in improvement of the overall living standards of the forest dependent communities.

Centre’s monitoring

About 90 per cent of the roughly Rs. 40,000 crore will be transferred to States and the remaining will be with the Centre to monitor and evaluate activities to be undertaken by the States/UTs.

From these funds, the Central government will provide research and technical support to the States to ensure that these amounts are efficiently used.