An alternate way of looking at Delhi tree crisis and remedy
Recent chaos in the pretext of cutting thousands of trees in Delhi was manageable and it could have been potentially avoided, had there been a proper planning and better implementation of the Govt scheme. Some people even misquoted about the wonderful initiative of compensatory afforestation (CA) activities as ‘failure and waste of money’, which in fact gained momentum after Forest Conservation Act 1980. These are the people who have never been to the field and probably have never seen the hard work which Dept of Environment and forests does in the harsh conditions. If it may be put in a binary manner that, if it’s a failure then how come Forest Cover in the country has increased from around 18 % to 24 % while the population has increased around four times with profound rise on pressure on Forests and natural resources, post 1947. It was possible due to massive afforestations done by the Department under various schemes. Interestingly, there was 1 % increment in the cover as per State Forest Report 2017.
In the Delhi case, where 17,000 trees are to be cut for infrastructure development, it seems it was inevitable looking at the proposed plan. Infrastructure needs to be developed due to burgeoning populations and human needs. But at the same time, it has to be questioned that are we adopting all compensatory measures or not. It’s funny that Forest Dept is labelled as anti-development very often and this time it’s against the taste of Delhi people. A forest officer while exercising his power while processing an FC Act case uses his mind judiciously and quantifies the loss not just in terms of number of trees but also of the entire biodiversity components including micro flora and fauna, which in return are compensated by the user agencies as CA and net present value (NPV) costs. And, at later stage the money obtained from the user agency is utilized for developing different projects, raising forest cover and sources for raising importance of Forest, Environment and Wildlife such as development of Parks and Reserves apart from afforestation activities.
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Compensation afforestation is double of the area under diversion proposal for private and Govt undertaking projects while it’s same as the area under diversion for Army or related establishment, but in case of Delhi due to kind intervention of Hon’ble court it is ten times the number of trees cut or affected in the project, which can be believed to be adequately compensating the loss of biodiversity, if it’s properly implemented in the field.
The need was to hit at the right nail and at the right time. The crisis could have been potentially avoided if the protesters were taken into confidence, were made a stake holder by informing all aspects of CA and by guiding them about the proposer implementation of CA scheme and have allowed raising voices against the anomaly in the afforestation but not just against the infrastructure developments. The need is to shift the focus from stopping a project to look at its after effect and ensuring enough remedies were adopted or not. Therefore, people of Delhi were needed to raise voices against implementation aspects and NGOs would have come forward to ensure whether it’s implemented in the field in toto or not. And, if it’s done it will generate ten times more oxygen source and other biodiversity components, which society would happily accept. The problem largely lies in the belief system, especially when corruption is rampant in the country. Responsible citizens must work jointly to raise the level of transparency and accountability and opposing such projects is certainly not a wise idea for safeguarding natural resources but acting as watchdog for implementation of CA works on the tenfold principle.
It may be accepted that in past, there were issues in implementation and execution of compensatory afforestation activities but after advent of modern technologies such as satellite based geo-tagging, uploading geo-coordinates of plantations on Egreenwatch Portal of the Ministry (MoEFCC) and adequate intervention of Decision Support System of Forest Survey of India, supplemented with third party monitoring by involving NGO and unrelated public members, afforestation activities can be fully ensured and in return a tenfold more Forest cover. There needs to be zero tolerance towards erring officers in order to restore the pristine beauty of the planet, which can be easily done as satellites can not lie or manipulate the works not done in the field. The solution lies in proper implementation of compensatory efforts but not just in opposing such projects especially when the country is struggling for world economic competence and global presence.
