Vanam-Manam reaches just 20 per cent of its target in AP

Green cover withers 

The government's ambi-tious plans to achieve 50 per cent green cover in the state remains a dream in the absence of any action to achieve the goal. The forest department is lagging behind in the Vanam-Manam initiative launched by the AP gov-ernment to increase the green cover in the state. The forest department was entrusted with plant-ing 6.65 crore saplings. It has achieved 20 per cent of the task with only 1.38 crore plants on the ground. The progress of the targets given to other departments is even worse. The district water management agency (DWMA) was given a tar-get of 42.74 lakh planta-tions but it has reached only 2.92 latch, which is only 6.8 per cent. The forest department has claimed it has reached more than the intended target in devel-oping stocks with the nurseries. According to the data on the CM's dashboard, for a target of developing 15.02 crore saplings, it has 15...- crore saplings in stock. However, the utilisation of the stocks was only 44.5 per cent. Moreover, there is no clarity as to how many plants have survived, as there's no supervision after the saplings were planted. The government has announced that all the tress were geo-tagged and the self-help groups are entrusted with the protection of these trees. However, the situation on the ground tells a differ-ent story. At many places where the mass planta-tion drive was taken up, the plants have withered.

Saplings withered at Kotthuru Tadepalli, where Chief Minister par-ticipated in mass planta-tion programme of Vanam Manam near Vijayawada, on Tuesday.

At Kotturu Tadepalli where CM Chandrababu Naidu himself participat-ed in the plantation drive, a handful of plants have survived. Only the saplings planted on either side of the pathway, watered occasionally, have survived but with-out any growth even after almost a year.

The government is fac-ing criticism on conduct-ing mass plantation pro-grammes without consid-ering practicality.

 Environmentalist Duggaraju Srinivasarao has observed that plant-ing 1 crore saplings on a single day is next to impossible. It needs at least 30 sq ft of space for a canopy to grow, but the saplings were planted without leaving even 10 sq ft. As a result, most of

■ ANDHRA Pradesh has 36914.78 sq km of notified forestlands; of which 9241.77 sq km are of scrub forests and 3900.49 non-forestlands.

 ■ AP HAS 22 per cent of notified cover when com-pared to the total land available in the state. Out of the total notified forest area, more than 8 per cent was degraded.

 ■ A SENIOR forest official said their first priority is to rejuvenate the degraded forest area through seed dibbling.

 ■ ENVIRONMENTALISTS termed the mass planta-tion drives as namesake exercises without commit-ment.

them have died. These are all namesake exercises with school children.
which all the same pro-vides photo opportunities for ministers.

State has its share in green loss 

The state government had its share of vanish-ing green cover. The gov-ernment is acquiring thousands of acres of forestlands for various development projects in the state. The govern. ment has de-notified nearly 34,000 acres in cap-ital region and now plans are afoot to acquire near-ly 9,324 acres of forest-land for Amaravati-Anantapur express high-way in Guntur. Prakasam, Kadapa. Kurnool and Anantapur districts. The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act gave a provision to de-notiry the degraded forestlands for the purpose of con-structing the capital for the new state. However even this provision comes with riders that the state government should develop double the amount of forest according to Compe-nsatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Act. The state government did not put in any efforts towards developing com-pensatory afforestation. Environmentalists doubt that the huge scale of publicity to Vanam-Manam and other pro-grammes with inflated figures was actually to bypass the law and to show that they have thi-nned the norms.