New Delhi: Modelled on the lines of the work done as part of the Clean Ganga Mission for the river and acknowledging that the growing water crisis is on account of degradation of river ecosystems, the Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ministry on Monday launched an ambitious river rejuvenation plan through forestry intervention for 13 major rivers and their tributaries across India.
The Ministry is aiming that the forestry interventions will increase overall health of the rivers and recharge groundwater from the increased cumulative forest cover by 7,417.36 sq kms across these 13 riverscapes.
The proposed interventions will also help to sequester 50.21 million tonnes CO2 equivalent in 10-year-old plantations and 74.76 million tonnes CO2 equivalent in 20-year-old plantations, it hopes.
The Detailed Project Report (DPRs) on rejuvenation through forestry interventions were released for rivers Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, Sutlej, Yamuna, Brahmaputra, Narmada, Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna, Cauvery, and Luni. These DPRs are funded by National Afforestation & Eco-development Board, under the Ministry, and prepared by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Dehradun.
These 13 rivers collectively cover a total basin area of 16,11,149 sq km that represents 49.01 per cent of the geographical area of the country. The length of 13 rivers, including all of their tributaries (202 in all) within the delineated river-scapes is 42,830 km.
Environment, Forest and Climate Change Minister Bhupender Yadav explained how the DPRs envisage convergence of budgets from multiple line ministries and will be part of Green India Mission II.
“Any scheme without the participation of people, the community will not succeed and therefore, along with the forestry interventions, we need this to be a work of community participation,” he said, adding that his Ministry needs to take the message to the community in a language that the members of the public would understand.
Terming the whole exercise as a “much needed initiative”, Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said: “We are custodians of the jal (water), jungle and zameen (land) and we are duty-bound to hand it over to the future generation as we got it or even better.”
“These reports are going to be the mainstay of the actions that the Ministry would take going forward so that our responsibility towards our lifelines are fully understood,” Environment, Forest and Climate Change Secretary Leena Nandan said and assured the state governments that the Ministry will be with them on every step of implementation.
The proposed cumulative budget outlay of 13 DPRs is Rs 19,342.62 crore. These DPRs are expected to be executed through the state Forest Departments as nodal departments and with convergence of schemes of other line departments in the states towards the activities proposed in the DPRs and funding support from the Centre.
(IANS)
