Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma today launched the GREEN (Grassroot level Response Towards Ecosystem Enhancement and Nurturing) Meghalaya Plus scheme, an initiative to conserve and protect Meghalaya’s natural forests.
The GREEN Meghalaya Plus scheme, based on the principle of Payment for Ecosystem (PES), supports villages, communities, clans, or individuals that commit to conserve and protect natural forests for a minimum period of 30 years.
Speaking at the programme, Sangma said, “It is beneficial for the people, the society, and the world that the PES programme should be taken up at the national and the international scale. It is the need of the hour. Let us protect the forests before it is destroyed, not rebuild them after it is destroyed. And that is really what Green Meghalaya is all about and we are really proud of this particular flagship programme. And that’s why we are very keen to go into the ‘Green Meghalaya Plus’, which is the next stage of this very-very important programme.”
Where the earlier scheme required a minimum of 2 hectares of forest, the new guidelines now reduce this to just 1 hectare, allowing smaller landowners and communities to utilise. Under Green Meghalaya+, the annual reward per hectare increases from Rs 15,000 per hectare to Rs 20,000 per hectare, the base rate of compensation has been increased from Rs 8,000 per hectare to Rs 10,000 per hectare per year to encourage wider uptake of the scheme.
RS Gill, Principal Conservator of Forests, stated that this is a completely unique and visionary approach forward as this is a step involving landowners, with their own vision to take the state forward along with the state.
