Article on Green India Mission

By Bharat Choudhary -
Kalpana Palkhiwala*

The National Mission for a Green India is one of the eight Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change. The Green India Mission recognizes that climate change phenomena will seriously affect and alter the distribution, type and quality of natural resources of the country and the associated livelihoods of the people. GIM acknowledges the influences that the forestry sector has on environmental amelioration though climate mitigation, food security, water security, biodiversity conservation and livelihood security of forest dependent communities. The Key Innovations are the focus on quality of forests, ecosystem services, democratic decentralization, creating a new cadre of Community Youth as Foresters, Adoption of Landscape-based Approach and Reform Agenda as conditionality. Total Mission Cost is Rs 46,000 crore for a period of 10 years covering both Centre and States.

                       
GIM puts the “greening” in the context of climate change adaptation and mitigation, meant to enhance ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and storage (in forests and other ecosystems), hydrological services and biodiversity; along with provisioning services like fuel, fodder, small timber and NTFPs. It will focus on quality of forests, ecosystem services and create a new cadre of community youth as foresters, adoption of Landscape-based Approach and Reform Agenda as conditionality.

            The primary focus will be on improving density of forest cover, emphasizing on biodiversity, water and improved biomass, Carbon sequestration as co-benefit and addressing ecosystems like grasslands, wetlands, urban and peri-urban. Gram Sabha will be treated as overarching institution to facilitate implementation of the Mission activities at village level, nested as Polycentric Approach. A new cadre of community youth as foresters will build a skilled cadre of young “community foresters” from scheduled tribes and other forest dwelling communities. Interventions at scale (5000-6000 hectares) at a time, simultaneous treatment of forest and non forest areas and key drivers of degradation will be addressed under Adoption of Landscape-based Approach.
GIM’ aim is to respond to climate change by a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures, which would help to enhance carbon sinks in sustainably managed forests and other ecosystems; adaptation of vulnerable species/ecosystems to the changing climate; and forest dependant local communities in the face of climatic variability.

Mission Objectives
It plans to  Increase forest/tree cover on 5 m ha of forest/non-forest lands  and improved quality of forest cover on another  5 m ha  (a  total of 10 m ha), improve ecosystem services including biodiversity, hydrological services and carbon sequestration as a result of treatment of 10 m ha, increase forest-based livelihood income for 3 million forest dependent households and  enhance annual CO2 sequestration  of 50-60 million tonnes by the year 2020

Mission Organization
            The Mission will implement its strategy through a set of 5 Sub-Missions and cross-cutting interventions at National level, an autonomous society under MEF with  an inclusive governing council, the mission to develop systems for highest degree of accountability  will work. At State  and District Levels,  State Forest Development Agency (SFDA) and  District FDA linked to District Planning Committee will be revamped. Gram Sabha and its Committees will work at village Institutions level and in  Urban Areas, Ward level Committees /RWAs with support from Municipal organizations and the Forest Departments. Monitoring  will be done at  4 levels, namely self Monitoring by community and field staff, Remote Sensing and GIS, third party monitoring  by key indicators .
The actual implementation period of the Mission would spread over 10 years, coinciding with the 12th and 13th five year plan period. The Action Plan for the year 2011-12 is the  preparatory year of the Mission.

The Draft Green India Mission document was put on website for comments on 23rd May 2010.The draft was made available in 11 languages. 7 regional consultations were organized over a month and a half from 10th June to 15th July in Guwahati, Dehradun, Pune, Bhopal, Jaipur, Vizag and Mysore. Over 1450 people participated in the consultations and thousands of mails were received from Panchayats, community groups, academia, researchers, schools, government agencies, private sector, media and concerned citizens. The revised document was approved by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change with certain observations.(PIB Features)

*Deputy Director (M&C), Press Information Bureau, New Delhi.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Continent Wise Classification and Distribution of Local Winds

By Bharat Choudhary -
Image
Local winds are small scale convective winds of local origin caused by temperature differences. Local terrain has a very strong influence on local winds, and the more varied the terrain, the greater the influence. These occur on a small spatial scale, their horizontal dimensions typically several tens to a few hundreds of kilometers. They also tend to be short-lived lasting typically several hours to a day. There are many such winds around the world. Most common local winds are  sea breezes and land breezes, Anabatic and katabatic winds, and Foehn winds. Land Breezes and Sea Breezes:   As the names suggest, the two breezes occur along coastal areas or areas with adjacent large water bodies. Water and land have different heating abilities. Water takes a bit more time to warm up and is able to retain the heat longer than land does. Now let us see the following Diagram - Land Breeze:  It's  a coastal breeze blowing at night from land to s...
Read more

Soil Geography - Zonal, Intrazonal and Azonal Soils (Older System of Classification)

By Bharat Choudhary -
Image
Soil geography deals with the distribution of soils as function of the five recognized soil-forming factors (climate, flora and fauna including Man, relief, parent material, time), either acting singly or in combination. It forms the basis of such concepts as zonality (i.e. the regional distribution of soils in zones), first formulated by Dokuchaev on the basis of climate for European Russia, elaborated upon further by Glinka and Sibirchev, who introduced the zonal, intrazonal and azonal soils approach, taking into account other soil-forming factors than climate. The loose material or the upper layer of the Mantle Rock, t he soil system, is the product of environmental and biological processes in interrelation with climate, vegetation (flora), animals (fauna), underlying rocks, topography and time which affect the biosphere. This is the  Zonal ( Older ) System of Classification .  This system links the distribution of various soil types to the distribution of...
Read more

Is God A Woman?

By Bharat Choudhary -
Image
THE SHAKTI PRINCIPLE Is God A Woman? Shakti literally means power but a different kind of power—the power of beauty, intuition, nurturing, and tenderness. DEEPAK CHOPRA Image Source :   http://www.carolinejariwala.com/ No God is not a woman, but God's feminine face has been ignored for too long. The masculine energies have dominated our culture for centuries and because of that we have become a predatory species. We are the only animal that kills our own kind most frequently in the name of God. The feminine forces of the universe are desperately needed if we have to evolve into our next stage of development.  "The whole universe is a gesture of erotic love and every dancing molecule is moving in longing for an unseen lover." God, being infinite intelligence, cannot be squeezed into the volume of a body or the span of a lifetime. Nor can God be conceived of in human form. Nevertheless, God can be symbolised in masculine and feminine forms. The masculine form needs to be pu...
Read more