Centre plans ‘Green India Mission’

• The Union government proposed to announce a "Green India Mission" shortly to increase the forest cover and quality of forests in the country.
• The Mission would aim at improving the quality of five million hectares of degraded forests and bringing another five million hectares of non-forest areas under forest cover through social and farm forestry.
• The Mission would be implemented with the participation of grama sabhas, women's self help groups and community organisations. A legal entity in the form of joint management committee would be formed for carrying out the programme.
• The proportion of open degraded forests was as high as 40 per cent in South India. The same problem was also there in other States. Regeneration of these forests could not be attempted through traditional ways of protecting the forests from biotic interference. No government could keep men and cattle out of the forests of India. So, ways of regenerating forests, recognising biotic pressures, had to be devised. Along with that, the de-greening of India had to be stopped if afforestation programmes were to have any effect.
• The government proposed to bring out a package for the Eastern Ghats, recognising the need for economic development of the local communities. The ecologically fragile areas of Western and Eastern Ghats were under great threat. A panel chaired by Madhav Gadgil had been appointed to draw up a strategy on development in ecologically fragile zones in the Western Ghats. 
• There are areas where developmental activity should be permitted in a regulated manner and areas which should be fully protected on the ghats. While coal-based power projects were a great threat to Western Ghats, the Eastern Ghats faced pressures to open up for mining.