Hyderabad, March 21: Highlighting the key role the government has to play in championing environmental issues, environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh felt that the rapid urbanisation coupled with mass migrations from rural areas are throwing up new challenges for the safety of the environment.
He supported the creation of green buildings as an effective means to contribute to the green cover in urban areas. He was speaking at a special plenary of the Green Landscape Summit organised by the Confederation of the Indian Industry held here today.
The minister also felt that the IT industry had a major role to play in this particular initiative. “Another sector which can make notable difference is the IT industry. They are poor examples of green habitats and they contribute to 2 percent of green house gases that are released. For instance, transforming the Hi-tech city into a complete green building would be a good influence,” he added. Taking potshots at the much hyped initiative to convert 33 percent of the area into green cover, he felt it was an unrealistic project. “Since 1950s I have been listening to the concept of one-third of India being converted into green cover. There are too many problems like population and development associated with the lands which makes it difficult to be possible,” he said.
Instead, he felt that if we can preserve and improve the existing forest land that would be an achievement.
“Presently 24 percent of the land is under green cover which includes 21 percent of forest cover and 3 percent of tree cover. What we need to do is to improve the quality of this green cover. Forty percent of forest cover is open degraded land. We need to convert this into quality forest cover and at the same time ensure regeneration of the lost greenery,’’ he said.
Asserting that his ministry will always support environmental issues of any kind, he cited Hyderabad as the best example for increasing its green cover tremendously in the last 25 years even though it does not have a natural green repository.
According to the minister, the foremost issues that needs to be looked into would be waste water management, solid waste management and wetlands which are being used for commercial purposes.
–Agencies