Nagar Van Yojana – Burning Issues

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The Nagar Van Yojana

Nagar Van Scheme was announced on the occasion of the World Environment Day (5th June).
The scheme was announced by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC)
India has decided to focus on Urban Forests in addition to the official theme.

Since 1974, it has been celebrated every year on 5 June: engaging governments, businesses, celebrities and citizens to focus their efforts on a pressing environmental issue.
The theme of World Environment Day 2020 was ‘Celebrating Biodiversity‘
Biodiversity is a concern that is both urgent and existential.
Recent events, from bushfires in Brazil, the United States, and Australia to locust infestations across East Africa – and now, a global disease pandemic – demonstrate the interdependence of humans and the webs of life, in which they exist.

In many countries there is a growing understanding of the importance of urban forests.
Cities like Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg have large forests within their urban areas.
In India, most cities have gardens and parks, but not forests.

Urban forests play an important role in ecology of human habitats in many ways.
Biodiversity conservation has traditionally been considered confined to remote forest areas but with increasing urbanisation a need has arisen to safeguard and save biodiversity in urban areas also
Aside from the beautification of the urban environment, they offer many other benefits.

The World Economic Forum says that cities that have more trees are less noisy, with lower pollution levels.
A fully-grown tree can annually absorb up to 150kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) – one of the main greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.
Trees can moderate temperatures in heavily built cities, where heat radiated from concrete on buildings and roads, makes these areas hotter than the surrounding countryside, in a phenomenon known as ‘heat island’

The Warje Urban Forest has become a role model for the rest of the country
Before becoming a pioneering urban forest, Warje Hill was a barren land under the Maharashtra Forest Department.
As the city grew, it caused many encroachments by slums and builders.
Maharashtra Forest Department joined hands with TERRE Policy, a city based NGO, Tata Motors and Persistent Foundation to turn the barren hill into a green forest.

To ensure that this project remained sustainable, peoples’ participation was encouraged. People can adopt trees in memory of their loved ones.
Smriti Van today boasts of more than 6,500 grown up trees.
Today, the forest is rich in biodiversity with 23 plant species, 29 bird species, 15 butterfly species, 10 reptiles and 3 mammal species. Five water ponds have been built and two watch towers constructed.
Nearly 1000- 1500 people visit Smriti Van every day.

The Nagar Van (Urban Forests) aims to develop 200 Urban Forests across the country in the next five years.
A City Forest will be developed in each City with Municipal Council.
The Scheme enforces people’s participation and collaboration between the Forest Department, Municipal bodies, NGOs, Corporates and local citizens.
These urban forests will primarily be on theexisting forest land in the City or any other vacant land offered by local urban local bodies.
Ecological rejuvenation of the city-Forests – the green lungs will contribute to Environmental improvement of cities by pollution mitigation, cleaner air, noise reduction, water harvesting and reduction of heat islands effect.

The finances for the scheme will be paid for by the CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act, 2016) funds.
The CAF Act was enacted to manage the funds collected for compensatory afforestation which till then was managed by ad hoc Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA).
Compensatory afforestation means that every time forest land is diverted for non-forest purposes such as mining or industry, the user agency pays for planting forests over an equal area of non-forest land, or when such land is not available, twice the area of degraded forest land.
As per the rules, 90% of the CAF money is to be given to the states while 10% is to be retained by the Centre.