Greenpeace India today alleged that the government is "dragging its feet" on an exercise to identify inviolate areas while it continues to allot coal blocks which is "destroying sensitive" forest areas and freshwater sources in a drought-afflicted country.
"It's been close to four years since the exercise to identify inviolate areas started and the Environment Ministry is still dragging its feet on this policy while the coal ministry is going ahead with auctioning and allotting these precious forest areas," said Nandikesh Sivalingam, senior campaigner, Greenpeace India.
"The Environment Ministry's silence gives tacit go-ahead to the government's coal-dependent energy policy. In effect, it allows the greed for coal to take precedence over everything else, including the inevitable consequence of coal mining destroying sensitive forest areas and freshwater sources in our drought-afflicted country," Sivalingam said.
The NGO also demanded that the Environment Ministry fix a deadline to finalise, publicise and enforce the inviolate policy.
Greenpeace India claimed that it had accessed information through an RTI query from the Environment Ministry which revealed that as many as 417 out of 825 current and future coal blocks should be categorised as inviolate areas as per hydrological parameters.
It said that last year, the Forest Survey of India (FSI) assessed 825 coal blocks based on the draft parameters for identification of inviolate forest areas.
For applying the hydrology parameter, the Environment Ministry has recommended excluding 250 m on either side of a first order stream while marking the boundaries of coal blocks.
Taking this criteria into consideration, a whopping 50.5 per cent of the coal blocks are rendered as "partially inviolate" according to the RTI information, Greenpeace India said.
Besides the hydrological parameters, the RTI data accessed by Greenpeace India also claimed that currently the list of inviolate coal blocks stand at a mere 49, covering an area of 1271.43 Sq km as per parameters which includes forest cover and type, biological richness and landscape integrity.
Sivalingam said mining in the forests even beyond the 250
m of the river banks often has a dramatic detrimental impact on the catchment, including water pollution, erosion and worsening water scarcity during dry season.
"If all the streams (second and third order) in the river basins are to be taken into consideration, the impact on central India's water sources could be much higher," said Sivalingam.
Greenpeace India said that reports show that the government has started applying the inviolate policy only "partially".
"However it is not clear how they include or exclude coal blocks from this list. At the same time, coal blocks listed as inviolate are being auctioned or allotted to mining companies.
"What is worrying is the callousness that the Environment Ministry has towards protecting the country's pristine natural resources. It's no longer only about forests, it's clear that mining in the central Indian forest could also have serious impacts on water sources," said Sivalingam.
It said that the lack of information in the public domain on what the current inviolate regions are is also putting forests and water resources "at risk".
"Biodiverse land that should otherwise be left untouched is being auctioned for coal mining. Greenpeace India demands that the Environment Ministry fix a deadline to finalise, publicise and enforce the inviolate policy...
"...Publish the forest areas or coal blocks that are inviolate along with the geo-referenced maps for all the concerned stakeholders including affected forest communities who are to consulted before the land is considered for mining," it said.
