NEW DELHI, October 11 — The National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (National CAMPA) under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) on Sunday released ₹8,500 crore in annual plan disbursements to 22 State CAMPA authorities to accelerate compensatory afforestation, catchment area treatment, and wildlife corridor restoration.
Under the statutory sharing formula governed by the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act, 2016, mineral- and forest-rich states including Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra received the largest capital allocations. The funds—collected from user agencies as Net Present Value (NPV) and compensatory levies against forest land diverted for non-forestry infrastructure—are strictly ring-fenced for regenerating degraded forest tracts, installing solar water pumps in wildlife sanctuaries, and forest fire mitigation.
To prevent fiscal diversion and verify ecological survival rates, the Ministry mandated polygon geo-tagging and multi-spectral satellite monitoring of all plantation patches onto the 'e-Green Watch' portal. The afforestation drive directly advances India’s Paris Agreement Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
The statutory architecture of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (establishing non-lapsable interest-bearing funds under the Public Account of India, allocating 90% of collected levies to respective State CAMPAs and 10% to National CAMPA), the Supreme Court’s landmark T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad judgment, Net Present Value (NPV) of forests (Kanchan Chopra Committee), and the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act 2023 are high-yield themes across UPSC Civil Services (GS-II & GS-III) and Indian Forest Service (IFS) examinations.