The central government will use the geographic information system to grant faster environmental clearances for infrastructure projects through the recently launched Parivesh portal. The use of technology will reduce the time taken to approve proposals by as much as 30%, officials said.
Parivesh is a single-window integrated environmental management system for online submission and monitoring of the proposals submitted by the proponents for seeking Environment, Forest, Wildlife and Coastal Regulation Zone clearances from the Central Government. It is a GIS-based system and analytics platform that provides information to various stakeholders using Decision Support System functionality.
The environment ministry already uses GIS for E-Greenwatch to track plantations and other forestry work taken up under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) fund and the Forest Survey of India uses Van Agni Geo-portal to provide for viewing of forest fire-related data.
The new process will make monitoring more efficient and reduce site visits by officials to check compliance. The tagging of projects on the GIS system will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the monitoring of environmental clearances.
The spot visits by the officials will be continued as per the requirement. However, the number of visits will be reduced as the proximity analysis can be done through a desktop assessment on the GIS system. This will reduce the time taken to assess and grant clearances by about 30%, he added.
