Seeing forests everywhere: A cure is finally within sight

livemint.com:

Lawmakers are set to discuss the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023, in the monsoon session of Parliament that started on Thursday. This is a rare opportunity for India to correct a 27-year-old policy logjam that is holding up growth and employment opportunities, without helping the country substantially conserve our forests. The Forest Conservation Act, as it stands, requires that approval from state authorities and the Centre must be obtained before any non-forest activity can be undertaken on any land that may have been notified as ‘forest’.

Even trivial requests, such as one for building an access path from one’s private premises to a public road, must get a sign-off from eight officials spread across local, state and central administrations. This forest-clearance approval is one of the most difficult permits to obtain in India, requiring a wait of sometimes as long as 365 days, and, reportedly, often lakhs of rupees in bribes. Applicants have to go through local forest officials all the way to forest ‘experts’ sitting in the leafy Jor Bagh locality of Delhi.

Incidentally, if one looks at the map around Paryavaran Bhawan, some of the area is marked as dense forest land. It is not clear if concessions were made to get forest-clearance approval for it. The Union government is trying to correct consequential mistakes made by the judiciary in the Godavarman case in defining the scope of forest laws in India.