India's Hydrocarbon Outlook – 2022-2023

175 DGH: 3 DECADES OF UNLOCKING INDIA'S HYDROCARBON POTENTIAL The provisions of FC Rules, 2022 comprise: Constitution of Committees: The Rules have advocated the constitution of advisory committee, a regional empowered committee at each of the integrated regional offices and a screening committee at State/ Union Territory (UT) government-level. Formation of a Project Screening Committee (PSC) in each state /UT for an initial review of proposals involving diversion of forestland. The committee is supposed to meet atleast twice every month and will advise the state governments on projects in a time bound manner. All mining projects between 5-40 Ha are planned to be reviewed within 75 days. The PSC brings a lot of time saving into the mundane processes of incomplete documents and to and fro query processing. This shall certainly reduce the delays. Regional Empowered Committees: All linear projects involving forest land upto 40 Ha and those that have projected a use of forestland 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. Delinking of PEL/PML from FC: No approval is required for assignment of Petroleum Exploration Licence(PEL) or Petroleum Mining Lease(PML) where neither physical possession nor breaking of forest land is involved, however, for all activities such as the establishment of exploration or developmental wells and connected activities on the forest land, approval under clause (ii) of section 2 of the Act shall be obtained for the actual impact area as per the procedure specified under these rules, subject to provisions of guidelines issued by the Central Government. Compensatory Afforestation: It is a mandatory process for mitigating the impacts of human activities on the environment and for promoting sustainable development. The MoEF&CC has taken cognizance of this fact and has facilitated the creation of land banks, a step towards ease of doing business. The applicants for diverting forest land in a hilly or mountainous state with green cover covering more than two-thirds of its geographical area, or in a state/UT with forest cover covering more than one-third of its geographical area, will be able to take up compensatory afforestation in other states/UTs where the cover is less than 20%. Accredited Compensatory Afforestation (ACA): Compensatory afforestation refers to planting activities done in lieu of diversion of forest for non-forest purposes such as mining, setting up of an industry or an infrastructure project. Earlier, a project developer had to provide land which is not notified as forest against forest diversion and had to bear the cost of raising compensatory afforestation over the same piece of land. The new rules, however, make way for private individuals who develop such plantation sites on their own land and sell them to project developers. Now, anyone can raise a plantation on his land and get benefitted by it. The circle rates of such lands will definitely increase. This is a positive step towards encouraging agroforestry and also a move towards sustainable development. Further, anafforestationshall becounted towards Accredited Compensatory Afforestation if such land has vegetation composed predominantly of trees, having canopy density of 0.4 or more (tree canopy density of 40% or more) and the trees are at least five (05) years old. In such cases, compensatory afforestation on 10% less land as compared to forest land to be diverted for non-forest purpose will also be accepted. Furthermore, theMoEF&CChasmade a provision which states that the total amount of land that needs to be compensated can be reduced if the plantations or accredited compensatory afforestation are made available in a wildlife corridor or contiguous to a forest. This will encourage plantations near wildlife habitats or carbon sinks. The Centre has envisaged online submission, processing and approval of proposals pertaining to ACA on A centralized web portal.