Nagar Van Scheme

• 06 Jun 2020

Why in News

The government has announced implementation of the Nagar Van Scheme on the occasion of the World Environment Day (5^th June).

• The theme of World Environment Day 2020 is 'Celebrating Biodiversity'—a concern that is both urgent and existential but India has decided to focus on Nagar Van (Urban Forests) in addition to the official theme.
• The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has also released a brochure on the best practices on Urban Forests.

Key Points

• Description:
  
  • The Nagar Van (Urban Forests) aims to develop 200 Urban Forests across the country in the next five years.
    
    • Warje Urban Forest in Pune (Maharashtra) will be considered as a role model for the Scheme.
  • 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 the existing forest land in the City or any other vacant land offered by local urban local bodies.
• Finances:
  
  • 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.

Source:PIB