The Telegraph reported that questions are raised over implementation of the compensatory afforestation program to make up the green cover loss in the POSCO steel project areas.

Nearly 300,000 standing trees, classified as forest category ones, are being felled to make way for the POSCO steel project. As tree felling is in full swing, the forest areas wear ravaged look.

Conservationists felt that the green belt should never be compensated.

Environment activist Mr Biswajit Mohanty said that “For the raising of trees on the plant periphery villages, availability of space would be the principal stumbling block. Though the areas have been identified, the said patch of government land is besieged with encroachment. Moreover, in the available forest areas, claims of dwellers under the Forest Rights Act could crop up.”

Necessary groundwork should have been done for the afforestation project much before the land acquisition process commenced on August 2010 in the wake of the Centre’s conditional green clearance to the project. Before pulling down of the first standing tree, the plantation work should have been set in motion.

The Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation which is acting as facilitating agency for the steel mill’s land acquisition should have taken up the plantation. However, nothing had yet been done, Mohanty, secretary of wildlife society of Orissa, felt.

According to the green activists, the more there is delay in the launch of the afforestation program the susceptibility of the coastal patch to possible nature’s fury is more pronounced.

Of the required 4,004 acres, a total of 2,958.82 acres come under the classified forestland. The green clearance accorded to the project by the ministry of environment and forests has made it mandatory for POSCO to raise fresh green belt in about 6,000 acres. While the compensatory afforestation would have to be taken up along the 3,000 acre stretch peripheral corridors of the venture, it has also been made obligatory for POSCO to cover equal area under regeneration of degraded forest program along the Mahanadi delta region.

The task is cumbersome for multiplicity of factors. The loss of tree cover would never be made up, as it has been seen in the past in other industrial ventures elsewhere, observe the green activists.

(Sourced from www.telegraphindia.com)