Development in harmony with environment or development in conflict with environment

1. the Environment
or
the Envi-ruin-ment

2. National
Green
Tribunal
Wildlife
People
Mining; Thermal Power
plants; Hydro electric
plants; major irrigation
projects; exploration of
minerals; Dams; Ports
and Harbors
Environment Forest

3. • National Green Tribunal (NGT) is the only judicial body below the Supreme Court before which
cases related to environment and forests can be filed.
• NGT is also the first recourse anybody except the
• project proponent has to be heard on any
environmental and forest clearances.
• The clearance processes, handled by the ministry's statutory
advisory bodies, do not have a fixed process of engaging with other stakeholders directly.
• The NGT hears all first challenges to environmental and forest clearances. Its orders can be
appealed against in the Supreme Court.
National
Green
Tribunal
Members of National Green Tribunal
• Chairperson: Retired Supreme Court justice or a high court chief justice.
• 10 – 20 Judicial Members
• 10 – 20 Expert members from across the country
Proposed changes
Judicial tribunal to be reduce to an administrative one under the ministry itself

4. Wildlife
The National Board of wildlife
1) Needs to have 10 non official members but only has 2 instead
2) Needs to have 5 independent NGO’s instead has only
one quasi – government
1) Gujarat Ecological Education and Research (GEER) Foundation,
Gandhinagar, Gujarat” which is a Gujarat Government organization and not
an NGO
1) The meeting minutes were always made available on the public domain but not
the last meeting that happened in August where more than 100 projects were
approved
2) The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has made seeking environment
clearance for development projects within 10km from national parks and wildlife
sanctuaries easier by approaching the National Board for Wildlife directly instead
of the state wildlife boards.
3) The proposals will now be directly dealt by the NBWL standing committee
headed by union environment minister

5. Forests
1) Delinking the forest and environmental acts to allow the
projects such as highways, on non-forest land without waiting for
approvals for the stretch involving the forests
2) Increasing the economic activity in the Naxal affected areas by giving clearance to
minor projects needing up to 40 hectares
3) Gram sabhas in forest areas have been stripped of their power to approve or
reject proposals for the diversion of their forest lands for building roads, transmission
lines, canals or other linear projects.

6. 1) Environment Ministry has allowed coalmines with a capacity of less than 16
million tons per annum to expand without conducting a public hearing. The cut-off for
this exemption used to be 8 mtpa.
2) Cleared the one-time expansion of mines with capacity greater than 20 mtpa if the
expansion is restricted to 6 mtpa.
3) Exempted irrigation projects affecting less than 2,000 hectares from
environmental clearances
4) Irrigation projects below 10,000 hectares can be cleared by the state
governments.
Environment
5) lifted a moratorium on eight critically polluted clusters across
the country

7. People

8. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/on-fast-track-environment-
minister-prakash-javadekar-clears-240-projects-in-3-
months/article1-1262676.aspx