Complete muff up
The moef (Union ministry of environment and forests) is a gross under-performer, and way off its targets for the tenth Five Year Plan. This is what the Planning Commission has concluded, in its mid-term appraisal of the ministry’s work “Disappointing” and “inadequate” are the themes that run through the commission’s report, finally endorsed by the National Development Council on June 28, 2005, after a year of controversy over the report’s conclusions. moef steadily refuses to accept them. “Sustainability is not an option, but an imperative” is the philosophy that propelled the tenth Plan’s emphasis on maintaining environmental quality to achieve quality of life. But this imperative is entirely absent from moef’s existing programmes, as well as new strategies.
Dwindled forests The tenth Plan stipulated that moef was to increase “forest and tree cover to 25 per cent by 2007 (end of the tenth Plan period) and 33 per cent by 2012 (end of the eleventh Plan period) as against the baseline cover of 23 per cent in 2001”. In this respect moef ’s progress, says the report, is “disappointing”. Total forest cover does not appear to have increased despite 1.1 million hectares covered under annual afforestation programmes. Afforestation has occurred only in harvested and degraded forests. “It is not about increase in forest cover; even if we are able to maintain the forest cover, it is commendable,” argues Karan Deo Singh, honorary senior fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research and Ecology and the Environment. No comment was forthcoming from the ministry.
The commission’s appraisal goes beyond rapping moef on its knuckles. It emphasises the need for the judicious use of forest resources and