The government will conduct continuous deliberations with all stakeholders to ensure maximum afforestation activities are carried out all over the country, said Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. He was speaking to journalists after a meeting of the state forests ministers on effective and efficient utilization of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority funds in New Delhi on Saturday. The ministry of environment and forests had handed over CAMPA funds of Rs 47,436 crore to state governments on August 29.
The meeting deliberated on ways to implement the CAMPA and utilise funds more efficiently to increase the green cover and water augmentation, Javadekar said after the meeting of state ministers who are meeting for the second time in the last 4 months. He said the meeting agreed to utilise CAMPA Funds of about Rs. 47,000 crore more effectively,” he said.
The meeting was also attended by Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi; director general of forests Siddhanta Das and senior forests officials from states. CAMPA established after a Supreme Court order in 2001 for the creation of an authority to end under-utilisation of the money collected towards compensatory afforestation.
India’s afforestation activities have resulted in a 70% increase in area under forest cover since 1950. The total forest area was 40.48 million hectare in 1950 and currently it is more than 70 million hectare.
Nearly a fourth of India’s land area is covered by 5 major categories of forests — subtropical dry deciduous, tropical moist deciduous, subtropical thorn. tropical wet evergreen forests, and other forest types comprising pine, temperate & alpine and tropical semi evergreen.
Nearly a fourth of India’s land area is covered by 5 major categories of forests — subtropical dry deciduous, tropical moist deciduous, subtropical thorn. tropical wet evergreen forests, and other forest types comprising pine, temperate & alpine and tropical semi evergreen.