Maharashtra Minister for Environment, Tourism and Protocol Aditya Thackeray, on Monday, had claimed that Nagpur Division had improved its work on all environment fronts including green cover, water conservation etc. However, the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2021, contradicts the minister’s claims. It states that the forest cover of four out of six districts in Nagpur Division has decreased in recent years. According to ISFR-2021, Gondia and Wardha experienced increase in forest cover in recent time but it is reduced in other districts like Nagpur, Bhandara, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. In 2021, Gadchiroli has the highest 9,902.82 sq km forest cover in division, which has reduced by 14.12 sq km from 2019.

 

 

 

Whereas, Chandrapur has the second highest forest cover in the division with 4,050.27 sq km in 2021, which also reduced by 4.10 sq km as compared to 2019. Nagpur district has total 1,998.79 sq km forest cover which is reduced by 1.59 sq km from 2019. Similarly, Bhandara district also experienced reduction in forest cover by 1.17 sq km than 2019. The forest cover in Gondia and Wardha districts have increased by 7.02 sq km and 2.34 sq km respectively. Decrease in green cover of Nagpur city is also noticeable in recent time. The comment made by the Environment Minister about increase of green cover, was refuted by greens of the city. Kaustav Chatterjee, Founder, Green Vigil Foundation said, “The reality of increase in green cover in Nagpur division can only be known after tree census. Nagpur has witnessed massive illegal tree felling in last few years.

 

There had been hardly any compensatory plantation.” While talking about electric vehicles, he said, “EV adoption will only be effective if the vehicles are charged with solar energy. By charging electric vehicles with electricity generated by thermal power plant, we will be shifting only tail pipe pollution to thermal power plants. More number of charging stations need to be increased.” Environment activist Shrikant Deshpande said, “In recent time, Nagpur division has witnessed many road infrastructure development projects like Samruddhi Mahamarg and for such projects the administration hacked thousands of trees. Same thing happened with new allotted mines. Even there is no transparency in compensatory plantation by these mines after cutting of huge number of trees for the project.” “If such projects have increased in recent time then how the Environment Minister is claiming that the administration is doing great job on environment front,” said Deshpande. “In last 20 years, the green cover of Nagpur city has gone down by 30 percent, yet the massive illegal tree-felling is going on beyond the control of NMC because of insufficient staff and many other reasons. These reasons are enough to explain that the green cover of the city has reduced,” said green activist Anasuya Kale Chhabrani. “We have performed poorly in water conservation also like the green cover.

 

Out of 11 lakes in and around city we are left with just three having rich catchment. In the name of development, the authorities are playing with the existence of Futala lake,” said Chhabrani. “Environment or any environment related issues has never been the matter of core importance for the administration till citizens started raising the issues,” said the green activist. Another green activist Surbhi Jaiswal said, “Nagpur is blessed to have so many lakes, however very few are in good shape and needs rejuvenation on war footing level. Majority of the lakes have not undergone desilting since long, leading to decline in water holding capacity, ending in drying up of lakes in summers.” It is clear that nothing is going right on environment front in the division as well as in the city as claimed the Environment Minister during his recent visit, Jaiswal added.