Date | June 08, 2017:

A move by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate change could delay forest clearance nod for various projects in steel, roads, railways, mining, irrigation, transmission line, hydro and wind power. A source in know of the matter told Moneycontrol that the steel ministry had conveyed its concerns regarding the change in guidelines to the environment ministry.

The Environment Ministry plans to modify existing guidelines for conducting cost benefit analysis of diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes. The Steel Ministry, speaking on behalf of the industry, fears this will add to the time in securing clearances for mining projects, which anyway take a lot of time.

Cost benefit analysis is a study that measures the benefits that will accrue out of a project against the costs in implementing it. For this purpose, all social and environmental costs are converted into monetary values. Needless to say, a project is approved only when the benefits outweigh the costs.

Companies contend that the proposed revised guidelines have a number of parameters which are difficult to quantify in monetary terms. They fear that the job of seeking clearance will become even more cumbersome as the process of conversion into numbers will be vague and hence questionable, the source said.

There could be a need to engage external experts to carry out the study, required for forest diversion, the source said, adding that availability of such expertise is limited.

Diversion of forest and for non-forest purpose is a time consuming process and currently it takes around two-and-a-half years or 900 days to grant stage-I of the clearance as against the guideline of 340 days.

It will take more time for a company to finalise cost benefit analysis as per the proposed rules, ultimately leading to a delay in grant of forest clearance, the source said.

The proposed new rules have also asked for three or more project alternatives for a particular area and a cost benefit analysis for all of them. The source pointed out this criteria could not be fulfilled in case of projects related to mining as there may not be any other feasible alternative available for that area.

(Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com/)