Par panel for densification of forests

A parliamentary panel has recommended that specific provisions be made in the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill 2015 to encourage densification of available forests closest to areas where deforestation is considered "unavoidable".
"The committee recommends that in order to meet the situation where enough land is not available for afforestation, specific provisions should be made in the bill for encouraging densification and revitalisation...
"...Of available forests closest to areas where deforestation is considered unavoidable on account of critically important national projects. Thus, the bill should contain provisions emphasising the same," the department-related parliamentary standing committee on science and technology, environment and forest said in a report tabled in Parliament today.

The CAF Bill 2015 will pave the way for expeditious utilisation of funds realised for forest land diverted to non-forest purposes in a transparent manner.
The Bill will also ensure utilisation of accumulated unspent funds already available with Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA).
The committee, chaired by Congress MP Ashwani Kumar said that in the report in 2013 on compensatory afforestation, the CAG computed that between 2006 and 2012, the state environmental departments were to get 103,382 hectares of non-forest land for afforestation from revenue departments.

Instead, all they got was 28,086 hectares out of which afforestation was carried out on an "abysmal" 7,280.84 hectare constituting seven per cent of the land which ought to have been received, the committee said.

"Both the CAG and the government have noted that it is difficult to procure land for compensatory afforestation. The 'land for land' requirement as stipulated by FCA, 1980, is difficult to satisfy as land is scarce.
It observed that land for compensatory afforestation
cannot be acquired under Land Acquisition Act 2013.
In 2014, the high-level committee reviewing environmental laws noted that while forest and tree cover has increased, the quality of this cover has significantly decreased, it observed.
"The high-level committee observed that one of the reasons behind this decline is the poor quality of compensatory afforestation plantations. The Supreme Court in its oder dated September 26, 2005 directed collection of these funds because states had utilised only 83 per cent of the funds collected," the committee observed.

It said that the CAF 2015 bill seeks to unlock these funds that are currently under "judicial" overview and create a structure so as to place them under "Parliamentary Legislative" oversight.