< Previous | Contents | Next >
♤ India has a total 46.99 lakh kms of road length and out of which over 96214 kms are National Highways,
accounting 2% of total road length. The Highways carry about 40% of the traffic load. The Ministry has decided to develop all of existing National Highways and 40,000 kms of additional roads in the next few years as Green Highways.
♤ The vision is to develop eco-friendly National Highways with participation of the community, farmers, NGOs, private sector, institutions, government agencies and the Forest Department.
♤ The objective is to reduce the impacts of air pollution and dust as trees and shrubs along the Highways act as natural sink for air pollutants and arrest soil erosion at the embankment slopes. Plants along highway median strips and along the edges reduce the glare of oncoming vehicles which sometimes become cause of accidents. The community involvement in tree plantation directly benefits local people by generating employment. The Panchayats, NGOs and other Self Help Groups (SHGs) will be involved in the process of planting and maintenance. The plant species selected will be region specific depending on local conditions such as rainfall, climate type of soil.
♤ 1% of the total project cost of all highways projects will be kept aside for the highway plantation and its maintenance, about Rs. 1000 crore per year will be available for plantation purpose. This policy will generate employment opportunities for about five lakh people from rural areas.
♤ In the new policy, the provisions about the responsibilities attached have also been clearly defined. Now it will be the responsibility of the planting agency to ensure that the condition of the site is good enough for the successful establishment of grasses.
♤ The monitoring of the plantation status has been included as an integral part of the policy, strong monitoring mechanism in place by using ISRO’s Bhuvan and GAGAN satellite systems.
♤ For Highway projects to be environmentally sustainable, it is necessary that the natural resources lost in the process of Highway construction are restored in one way or the other. This requires that ecological needs are taken into consideration from the stage of project planning and designing to its execution. The Highways developed as green corridors not only sustain biodiversity and regenerate natural habitat but also benefit all stakeholders, from road users to local communities and spur eco-friendly economic growth and development.
Do you know?
The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) is awaiting a final nod from the Ministry of Defense (MoD) to start its drone-monitoring project for combating wildlife poaching and human-animal conflict. The NTCA has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) to start monitoring by drones in five tiger reserves (TRs) — Panna, Corbett, Kaziranga, Sundarbans and Sathy-amangalam, and the permission being sought is to fly the drones only within the boundary of the core area of these reserves.