Jairam Asks Prime Minister To Decide On Mine Approvals
Author:
First published in Sanctuary Asia,
Vol. 30
No. 4,
April 2010
Jairam has attributed the holding up of projects to an attempt by his Ministry “to balance conservation and development". Evolving an empirical formula to compute weighted forest cover (WFC), the Ministry of Environment & Forests has suggested that areas which have a WFC higher than 10 per cent would be Category A, and an “application for forest clearance will not be entertained in such areas".
The remaining areas — areas in Category B — would be open for applications, which would be processed under the Forest (Conservation) Act with the rider that they should not form part of any national park, wildlife sanctuary or important wildlife corridor, and should not be an island of disturbance in an otherwise unfragmented landscape.
Read the original report by Amitav Ranjan here.
