Even as the Prime Minister pitches for infrastructure investments, the Union environment ministry is planning to reduce the area available for mining and other infrastructure projects.
Official sources told a business daily the ministry would soon earmark “inviolate areas” which would apply to all development and infrastructural projects, besides subsuming nine coal fields in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which were earlier termed “no go" areas. So the new norms will be much more prohibitive than the earlier regime.
“The go, no go classification will be subsumed in the definition of the inviolate areas. In addition, there will be 7-8 criteria defining inviolate areas, including protected area status, crop diversity, biodiversity richness and the number of species found.
Further, the norms will be for the entire country and cover all types of mining and other projects,” said a senior environment ministry official. The go, no go classification, which relied solely on forest cover, was jointly done by the ministries of coal and environment.
A group of ministers (GoM) on coal is now debating the issue after Planning Commission member BK Chaturvedi suggested its withdrawal as it has no legal sanctity.
The go-no-go classification affected nine major coal fields namely Talcher, IB Valley, Mandiraigarh, Sohagpur, Wardha, Singrauli, North Karanpura, West Bokaro and Hasdeo and the 602 coal blocks located in these coalfields. The inviolate areas will not be restricted to national parks, tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries and other protected areas but will also include other areas endowed with dense forest cover or rich biodiversity. A committee under environment secretary T Chatterjee will submit final recommendations for these inviolate areas soon.
The environment ministry had earlier proposed biodiversity indexing for these areas including animals, insects, herbs, shrubs and reptiles besides the forest cover. The ministry has also considered a fresh exercise to strictly demarcate some of the areas as “no-go” for coal mining besides looking at the projects on a case-by-case basis. The go-no-go classification had adversely impacted coal production as these blocks hold 660 million tonnes reserves with a potential to generate 1,30,000 MW of electricity.
Official sources told a business daily the ministry would soon earmark “inviolate areas” which would apply to all development and infrastructural projects, besides subsuming nine coal fields in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which were earlier termed “no go" areas. So the new norms will be much more prohibitive than the earlier regime.
“The go, no go classification will be subsumed in the definition of the inviolate areas. In addition, there will be 7-8 criteria defining inviolate areas, including protected area status, crop diversity, biodiversity richness and the number of species found.
Further, the norms will be for the entire country and cover all types of mining and other projects,” said a senior environment ministry official. The go, no go classification, which relied solely on forest cover, was jointly done by the ministries of coal and environment.
A group of ministers (GoM) on coal is now debating the issue after Planning Commission member BK Chaturvedi suggested its withdrawal as it has no legal sanctity.
The go-no-go classification affected nine major coal fields namely Talcher, IB Valley, Mandiraigarh, Sohagpur, Wardha, Singrauli, North Karanpura, West Bokaro and Hasdeo and the 602 coal blocks located in these coalfields. The inviolate areas will not be restricted to national parks, tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries and other protected areas but will also include other areas endowed with dense forest cover or rich biodiversity. A committee under environment secretary T Chatterjee will submit final recommendations for these inviolate areas soon.
The environment ministry had earlier proposed biodiversity indexing for these areas including animals, insects, herbs, shrubs and reptiles besides the forest cover. The ministry has also considered a fresh exercise to strictly demarcate some of the areas as “no-go” for coal mining besides looking at the projects on a case-by-case basis. The go-no-go classification had adversely impacted coal production as these blocks hold 660 million tonnes reserves with a potential to generate 1,30,000 MW of electricity.
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