India: When the entire world is stressing on the conservation of wildlife, environment, forests, the government of India has reduced the funding for flagship schemes of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Many greens have raised questions over this as the poaching activities and other threats to the wildlife still remain rampant.
According to the ‘State of India’s Environment 2022’ released by the centre for Science and Environment(CSE), as many as 2639 leopards and 579 Tigers were killed in the last 15 years. The report also said that there is a decline of 16 to 47 per cent in the fund allocation for the three of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) schemes for wildlife conservation.
The fund allocation for the development of wildlife habitat reduced from Rs 165 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 124 crore in 2019-20 and to Rs 87 crore in 2020-21. Also, the fund allocation for the Project Tiger which is being implemented in the tiger reserves at 19 states reduced from Rs 323.2 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 281.8 crore in 2019-20 and to Rs 194.5 crore in 2020-21.
Even the fund allocation for the Project Elephant which is being implemented in 22 states reduced from Rs 29.1 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 28 crore in 2019-2020 to Rs 24 crore in 2020-21.
Ironically, this report has revealed that environment crimes in India have increased by 78 per cent in the year 2019-20.
Photo by Magda Ehlers from Pexels
