Bhubaneswar: Odisha Steel Producers Association (OSPA) has urged the state govt in a letter to take up with the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEF&CC) a policy provision allowing eligible industrial projects to undertake compensatory afforestation over degraded forest land.It said the industries should be allowed on lines of the provision available to central PSUs and central projects. Currently, private companies are not eligible to use degraded forest for compensatory afforestation (plantation).“Odisha has a genuine case to seek this policy change, given limited availability of suitable non-forest land for compensatory afforestation with the state’s substantial degraded forest land requiring restoration. Allowing eligible projects to undertake compensatory afforestation on degraded forest land, with adequate safeguards, would support ecological restoration, reduce pressure on productive land and facilitate faster project execution and investment in the state,” said Asit Tripathy, OSPA president and former Odisha chief secretary.Industry experts argue that a more flexible framework for compensatory afforestation could strengthen Odisha’s ease-of-doing-business agenda while balancing environmental and developmental priorities. Streamlining land identification for compensatory afforestation and approvals could reduce project delays and improve investment certainty, Tripathy added.The OSPA noted that state govt has set a vision to scale steel manufacturing capacity in Odisha from the present level of 45 MTPA to 130 MTPA by 2030. This massive expansion necessitates substantial land acquisition including unavoidable use of forest land, for establishing steel plants, auxiliary units, downstream projects, and other related infrastructure.“There is thus a requirement for identification of large parcels of land for compensatory afforestation purpose. However, project proponents are encountering severe bottlenecks in identifying the non-forest revenue land for the purpose,” S K Popli, OSPA secretary general wrote to state govt.He has pointed out that identifying sizeable and contiguous parcel of suitable non-forest revenue land for compensatory afforestation is becoming increasingly challenging for industrial projects.G Rajesh, additional PCCF (nodal) said as per the current provision laid down by MoEFCC, central and state PSUs are now eligible to take up afforestation degraded forest patch but private companies are not.
