There are several parts of the city that have lost significant green cover for infrastructure projects over the years. On paper, the government ensures compensatory plantation. And it’s not that this exercise isn’t carried out. It is, there is a well-laid-out process and the forest department is in charge of it. But most often, the trees end up being planted many kilometres away from where they originally grew roots. In Gurgaon’s case, compensatory plantation has even taken place 300km away.So while the green account books may reflect a tree balance sheet where all is in order, in reality, areas that have lost trees have been left with no compensatory greenery in their vicinity. The loss of vegetation is permanent.For instance, according to forest department records, 27,180 trees have been felled in Gurgaon for different development projects, including underpasses, flyovers and widening of roads between 2016 and now — 9,100 trees were cut in 2016-17, 7,751 in 2017-18 and 10,329 in 2018-19. The number of tress cut in 2018-19 — to make way for the expansion of NH248A and a flyover and underpass at Atul Kataria Chowk — is the highest for a single year since 2012. Between 2012 and 2016, the city lost nearly 7,800 trees.The authorities claim 4.76 lakh trees have been planted in the last three years to compensate for the loss. But very few plantation drives have taken place within a 5km radius of the areas where trees were cut. Various RTI responses have shown trees were planted mostly in Manesar , Sohna-Damdama Road, Silani, Abheypur, Sukhrali, Badshahpur, Pataudi, Gurgaon-Faridabad Road, Kadarpur, Sohna, Ghangola, Hajipur, Kadarpur, Kasan, Hailey Mandi, Farrukhnagar, Sultanpur, Bhora Kalan and Makrola, to mention just some of the locations. Absurdly, compensatory plantation also took place several times in Mewat, nearly 70km away from the city, and in Panchkula district’s Morni, which is as far as 300km from Gurgaon.Why? Because the compensatory plantation policy is dependent on availability of land, wherever that may be available.WHAT HAPPENS AFTER PLANTING TREES?To find out just how many of the trees planted during plantation drives have survived, and the time taken by the authorities to carry out compensatory afforestation, a TOI team visited five plantation sites, in Kasan, Manesar, Farrukhnagar, Gurgaon-Faridabad Road and Sohna-Damdama Road (for which the forest department provided GPS readings). Here, barely a few saplings have grown into trees, belying the claims of the forest department.In Ghamroj, there were only 25 fully-grown trees out of the approximately 2,000 Papri saplings the forest department claims to have planted in 2014-15. In Kasan, the same department planted some 100 saplings in 2017-18, but only six Shisham trees and two of the Papri species have survived. About 30 trees of Pilkhan and Papri were found at a plantation site on Sohna-Damdama Road, where the department says it planted 1,250 trees (approx.) in 2015-16. Unforgivably, out of some 1,500 trees planted in Farrukhnagar in 2014-15, only two have survived.Further, the forest department, it was found, can often take anywhere between two and four years to carry out compensatory afforestation. “I have been following up with the authorities over where compensatory afforestation has been carried out. I got to know through RTI responses that crores of rupees are lying in CAMPA (Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority) corpus, as many afforestation drives have not even been carried out,” said K K Yadav, former town planner and now a professor at Amity University, Manesar. “Those that have been carried out are failures – I have visited the spots and found that hardly any sapling turned into a tree in Kasan, Sanp Ki Nangli and Manesar after the plantation drive,” Yadav added. According to forest officials, plantation drives can be carried out only on land falling in their jurisdiction, and much of forest land is not in the main city. “The major challenge we face is not funds but availability of land – there is shortage of land with the forest department to carry out afforestation drives. That is why plantation drives are carried out in far-off places,” explained a senior forest official.“It takes time to carry out plantation drives because most drives can be carried out only in a particular season – before and during the monsoon. Shortage of staff makes it difficult to carry out compensatory plantation of the entire year within two-three months.”THE WAY TO RE-GREENINGMost government agencies give money to the forest department to carry out compensatory plantation. This money, deposited in the department’s treasury, goes towards planting new trees and ensuring their survival in degraded forest. The drives are typically carried out under CAMPA, which allows collection of funds from any person, organisation, company or government department to make a request for diversion or de-notification of forest land for non-forest purposes. The primary objective of CAMPA is to revive degraded forest land.To get approval for tree-cutting, the government agency in charge of felling trees for development projects first seeks transfer of land from the forest department, which sends the request to theregional office of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEF&CC). The agency can either give land in lieu of land, or provide funds to carry out afforestation on at least double the size of land where trees are required to be cut (land given in lieu of land could be anywhere in the state). Then, compensatory afforestation is carried out under CAMPA on land falling under its jurisdiction.However, experts say compensatory afforestation drives are largely being carried out without first evaluating the rate of survival of the trees. “An audit report of the Delhi government says there is no document showing what the recorded survival rate is. Nobody knows what happens to these plantation drives. The situation is same in other states,” points out Aditya N Prasad, an environmental lawyer. “Many times, the afforestation is done at one place but shown at multiple places. The problem is that there is no will to carry out plantation drives and ensure survival of plants,” Prasad adds.However, R P Balwan, former conservator of forests, South Circle, Haryana, says norms for compensatory afforestation under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980 are both clear and comprehensive. Still, these norms, he reveals, are being “completely ignored” by the forest department when permission to divert land for non-forest activities is given. “There are two factors that are being ignored by the forest department. First, the department rarely asks for land in lieu of land. This leads to shortage of land for afforestation – if land is provided by the agency, plantation can be carried out easily,” said Balwan.“Second, the norms clearly state that plantation should be carried out as close to the diverted land as possible, which has been ignored most of the time,” he added.

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