Compensatory afforestation under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and the CAMPA framework
Note
Diverting forest land for non-forest use under Section 2 of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 triggers a statutory obligation to plant trees over equivalent non-forest land, and to deposit funds covering Net Present Value and afforestation costs. Those funds are received, managed and utilised by the National CAMPA Authority and State CAMPA bodies created under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016. The Supreme Court's 2002 Godavarman order first mandated an ad hoc CAMPA; the 2016 Act codified that mandate into permanent legislation. User agencies deposit money, states draw on it for time-bound plantation and forest protection activities, and site inspection reports provide the monitoring trail. Funds flow to states rather than being held centrally, which is the design feature the 2016 Act introduced over the ad hoc arrangement.
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Questions on this topic
Consider the following pairs regarding the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) framework under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980:
- Compensatory Afforestation — Mandatory obligation triggered when forest land is diverted for non-forestry purposes
- Annual Plan of Operations (APO) — The instrument through which CAMPA funds are planned and released to states for afforestation activities
- Third-party plantation survival audit — A mechanism to assess whether plantations raised under compensatory afforestation commitments have actually survived and established
Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?
Explanation
All three pairs are correctly matched. Under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 and the CAMPA framework, compensatory afforestation is a statutory obligation: whenever forest land is diverted for non-forestry uses (roads, dams, mining etc.), the user agency must fund equivalent afforestation elsewhere. The Annual Plan of Operations (APO) is the approved annual budget document under which states draw down CAMPA funds to implement afforestation works — the Himachal Pradesh case illustrates this when spending fell short of the APO-approved amount. Third-party plantation survival audits are the prescribed oversight mechanism to verify that compensatory plantations have actually survived and are not merely on paper — a critical check because plantations may be planted but fail to establish due to unsuitable sites, poor maintenance, or delayed work. The CEC's findings in Himachal Pradesh — incomplete survival assessments, a 51% survival rate, and underutilised APO funds — reflect failures across all three dimensions of the CAMPA framework.
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