February 8, 2025

The Union Environment ministry will launch a single-window system for environment, forest, wildlife and coastal regulation zone clearances by the end of the year with an aim to reduce the time required to process the green nod for various infrastructure projects, it said in a statement. on Saturday.

Pro-Active and Responsive facilitation through Interactive and Virtuous Environment Single-window Hub or Parivesh is a window system for environment, forest, wildlife and coastal regulation zone clearances.

The government now intends to unveil Parivesh 2.0 by the end of the year.

During the National Conference of environment, forest and climate change ministers held in Ekta Nagar, Gujarat on Saturday, the ministry informed state environment ministers about the new Parivesh system, which is update.

“The Covid 19 pandemic has prompted our society to look for more technology-driven solutions to reduce the physical touchpoints for getting services. A need was felt to improve the experience of Parivesh users. which uses new technologies for faster Green Clearances,” the statement said.

When asked how Parivesh 2.0 will be more effective than the current system of environmental clearances, a senior environment ministry official said there will be a reduction in turnaround time by ensuring a management committee. of the project consisting of state and central officials to assess the project at the same time. “This will reduce multiple iterations of the query, improve transparency and reduce the time taken,” he said. Powers have been delegated to the Regional Offices (IROs) of the Ministry to handle cases of less than 40 Ha and also cases of more than 40 Ha for Hydel, and mining sector proposals. These cases were tried by the central government in the past. This should also reduce the processing time of clearances.

“Provision is made for each state to create a land bank in advance so that when the proposals come to the states they can take immediate actions for the necessary reforestation. Also, earlier, there was no mechanism to exchange private land for forest land that is proposed to be transferred instead of paid reforestation. This provision enables a plantation made by any individual or institution in an area of ​​10 hectares in excess of 5 years old and with a density of 0.4 can be exchanged for meeting the obligation of compensatory afforestation which is a very good provision of renewal,” said the official. . Every time forest land is transferred for non forest purpose such as mining or industry, the project developer must compensate for the loss by paying for the planting of trees in the same area on non-forest land, or if such land is not available, twice. the area of ​​degraded forest land.

More than 6000 proposals for environmental clearance and 6500 applications for forest clearance are currently pending in the states.

“Efforts should be made by the states to clear every proper proposal soon. You may know that due to this delay, projects worth thousands of crores of rupees will be stuck, PM Modi said on Friday at the inauguration of the conference.

HT reported on Wednesday that the environment ministry has started overhauling the process of considering and granting forest clearance, to make the process compliant with the Forest Conservation Rules 2022 and issuing clearances for to move the forest to various infrastructure or mining projects in an hourly manner.

“There is a legal issue with the implementation of the new rules. The forest conservation rules 2022 were presented to Parliament in the last session and two statutory motions were made for the cancellation of the rules. Enforcing the rules would now be a violation of the parliamentary process. This will also mislead the states and lead to violation of forest rights law. The FC Rules 2022 are still being considered by the legislature,” said Tushar Dash, Odisha-based independent researcher on the Forest Rights Act 2006.

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