The National Green Tribunal stayed a circular on Friday that was issued by the environment ministry allowing those government agencies undertaking “linear” projects, such as highways, power lines, canals and railway lines, to begin cutting trees before getting a final forest clearance.

In August, the government appointed a committee headed by retired bureaucrat TSR Subramanian to review environmental laws, but not the National Green Tribunal Act that set up the tribunal in 2010. Yet it ended up recommending diluting the tribunal's powers. The tribunal's order on Friday is the first judicial challenge to the Modi government's moves to weaken environmental safeguards.

Large projects need a forest clearance from the environment ministry as part of the final clearance. This is because while forest land belongs to states, the central government decides how large projects can use this land.

The ministry of environment, forests and climate change, however, wants to do away with the forest clearance. It issued a circular in August that said states could allow bodies undertaking linear projects to fell trees after obtaining the first clearance from the ministry. It clarified in another circular in January which official in the state could issue the permission to cut trees.

Nagpur-based wildlife biologist Milind Pariwakam challenged the circulars in the National Green Tribunal, a judicial body set up in 2010 to expedite cases relating to the environment. The tribunal has stayed both circulars’ directives and said that all tree-felling must be suspended till it passes a judgement on the case.

Clearance process

A project needs to pass two stages of clearances before its undertaker can begin cutting trees, according to the Forest (Conservation) Act. A project passes the first stage if the government deems it is not harmful to the environment. To pass the second stage, the undertaker must identify non-forest land on which to plant saplings to replace the trees that might have to be cut. It must deposit the money needed for this with the state government. Once this is done, the centre will grant a final clearance.

The ministry’s circular allows linear projects undertaken by government agencies such as the National Highways Authority of India, Border Roads Organisation, Indian Railways and the Central Public Works Department, to bypass the second step.

Tribal rights groups had opposed the exemption for linear projects on the grounds that it violated their gram sabhas’ right to grant consent, according to the Forest Rights Act. The circular also in effect denies people the right to contest the government’s decision before the National Green Tribunal because it can hear appeals only after a project has obtained a final clearance. Pariwakam’s lawyer argued that if felling starts before this, irrevocable damage might be done even before the verdict is delivered.

Downside of linear projects

Linear projects such as highways, canals, power lines and railway lines might seem benign, partly because of their obvious benefits and partly because they are often only built along relatively narrow strips of land and therefore do not require many trees to be cut. But linear projects can also cause lasting harm to their ecosystems, as the National Board for Wildlife, headed nominally by the prime minister, acknowledged in 2011.

Activists opposed a plan to add a railway line through the Kanha-Pench corridor, one of the country’s finest tiger reserves. National Highway 7 already runs through the area and there are plans to widen it. If a railway line is added, it will be even more difficult for tigers to cross from one end to another – which will lead to lower genetic diversity and inbreeding, and its consequent problems.

Power lines through tiger corridors can also kill the animals, which is part of the reason activists oppose one that was to go through Kodagu in Karnataka. Not only do animals risk electrocuting themselves, poachers also use the lines to set traps. In Orissa in 2012, for instance, 295 elephants were killed by poachers. Sixty-one were electrocuted.

A compromise is possible. Two highways, NH212 and NH67, run through the heart of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, which spans the borders of Karnataka and Kerala. Vehicles speeding at night along the highway caused more deaths than poaching. In 2010, the Karnataka High Court banned night traffic along the two highways, after which road accidents fell significantly.