Can we compensate the loss of water bodies, mountains or forests with money? It is impossible! Damage to the environment is irreparable.

There has been massive damage to the environment in Jammu and Kashmir mainly due to haphazard construction of infrastructure development projects. This happens in absence of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
Be it laying of power transmission wires or construction of roads in eco-fragile areas, forests have been bearing the brunt of “development.”  There has been massive outcry by environmentalists about the felling of trees for construction of roads through forests.

The felling of trees for construction of the Handwara-Bangus road has caught the attention of National Green Tribunal (NGT). An environmental and RTI activist Rasikh Rasool Bhat has been fighting a long legal battle for protection of forest along the road. The petitioner has submitted in the NGT that clearance had been granted only for Phase-I of the project while work on Phase-II had already been initiated without formal approval.  Acting on the petition, NGT in August this year had directed the Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir to file a comprehensive affidavit explaining how more than 1,000 trees and saplings were felled in the Rajwar Forests of Kupwara for the Handwara–Bangus road project without the mandatory payment of compensatory........

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