The Hindu Business Line : Japan bank to give loan for TN afforestation project

The Tamil Nadu Afforestation Project (TAP) is being implemented, with an outlay of Rs 567.42 crore, for another eight years with a loan from the Japan Bank of International Co-operation (JBIC).

In 1997, the State Forest Department launched TAP, funded by a soft loan of Rs 688 crore from JBIC, for a period of eight years, according to Mr C. K. Sreedharan, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Tamil Nadu.

The project was implemented with participation from the people and aimed at restoring degraded forests and alleviating poverty in the villages near the forestland, he told Business Line.

Tamil Nadu has 32 river systems, 38,000 irrigation tanks and is prone to droughts and floods mainly because of the wrong land use policy, Mr Sreedharan said. All the rivers start in the reserve forests in the Western and Eastern Ghats. These forests have to be managed and conserved for catchments and to preserve the bio-diversity of the Ghats.

According to estimates, about seven lakh tonnes of fuel wood, 1.25 lakh tonnes of fodder and green manure and 10,000 cubic metres of small timber are annually removed from the forests in the State. Over one lakh people are engaged in head-load removals.

By 1997, almost a third of Tamil Nadu's 22,800 sq km of forests was degraded due to illicit felling, over grazing and forest fires. Almost a decade later, large areas of the degraded forests are regenerating.

After the Earth Summit in 1992, there was a change in forest policy worldwide, Mr Sreedharan said. The thinking was that the forestlands must be conserved for the ecological benefit of the State and for economic benefit. The result was the Joint Forest Management programme for planning, conservation, afforestation and benefit-sharing.

TAP, in the first phase, covered an extent of 4.80 lakh hectares of degraded forests and community lands. About 23,450 check dams and 2201 percolation ponds were constructed for rainwater harvesting. A combined storage of more the 800 million cubic ft was created. The result was that forest fringe villages saw a rise in water table ranging from five per cent to 10 per cent despite drought.

The department set up a Geographical Information System to implement and monitor the project. Making people a part of the change was an integral part of TAP, so village development works were undertaken — about Rs 41.30 crore worth of work benefiting 946 villages over 27 districts was carried out.

Mr Sreedharan said that the other achievements under TAP were alternative sources for employment for 1.75 lakh forest dependants, Rs 53 crore of micro credit distributed to villages and 3,891 self-help groups benefiting about 60,000 women were formed.

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