Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022

What are the key rules? 

• Under these rules, the Ministry has directed the constitution of a project screening committee in each state/UT for an initial review proposals involving diversion of forest land.
• The committee will meet at least twice every month and will advise the state governments on projects in a time bound manner.
• The committee will examine every proposal received from state governments or administrations of Union Territories (UTs) without going into the merit of the proposal.
• Some of the things that the committee will review are whether the proposal is complete in all respects and its location with respect to restricted areas or categories. 
• The notification added that the committee may call the user agency for any clarification or additional documents, if any.
• The new rules also prescribe the time frame of review for different kinds of projects. 
  • All non-mining projects between 5-40 hectares must be reviews within a period of 60 days and all such mining projects within 75 days.
  • For projects involving a larger area, the committee gets some more time — 120 days for non-mining projects involving more than 100 hectares and 150 days for mining projects.
• The project screening committee will be headed by a nodal officer but will have district collector, conservator of forests who will advise on projects and will have to do the initial screening to save time. 

• The rules provides for Constitution of Advisory Committee that would consists of 6 members including a chairman.

• It also provide for the establishment of Regional Empowered Committee  at each of the Integrated Regional Offices.
• The other significant change introduced in the new rules is that all linear projects (roads, highways, etc), projects involving forest land up to 40 hectares and those that have projected a use of forest land having a canopy density up to 0.7 — irrespective of their extent for the purpose of survey — shall be examined in the Integrated Regional Office.
• The process has been decentralised, giving the responsibility of considering all linear and hydel projects to integrated regional offices but all mining projects will be appraised by the central office. 

• The notification also shifts the onus of ensuring forest rights of forest dwellers are rehabilitated to state governments.

• So far, compliance with the forest rights act was mandatory before the Centre granted stage II forest clearance to any project, however, that has also changed.
• Centre has given the responsibility of settling forest rights and then allowing diversion of forest land to states.
• On compensatory afforestation the new rules stated that those applying for diverting forest land in a hilly or mountainous state with green cover over two-thirds it’s geographical area or in a state/UT with forest cover of over one-third the geographical area will be able to take up compensatory afforestation in other states/UTs where the cover is less than 20%.