The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Around 33,700 fully-grown trees will be cut to construct an approximately 100 kilometre-road for pilgrims in forest divisions across the three districts of Ghaziabad, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, as per a Hindustan Times report published on May 30.
The Uttar Pradesh government informed this to the National Green Tribunal, India’s apex green court, after the latter took suo motu cognisance of a news report in February that said that the UP forest department had permitted the logging of around 1 lakh trees and plants for the two lane road along the Upper Ganga Canal near the state’s border with Uttarakhand.
The news comes at a time when many parts of north and northwestern India, including Uttar Pradesh, are experiencing extremely high temperatures due to an ongoing heat wave. Per one estimate, at least 61 people have died due to the heatwave in several northern states including Uttar Pradesh as of May 31. Studies show that trees in urban areas can decrease temperatures by several degrees and serve as important means to cope with extreme events such as heatwaves. Moreover, deforestation – especially in the tropics – is known to increase local temperatures, disrupt rainfall patterns that exacerbate the impacts of climate change, and impact both human health and agricultural productivity greatly.
Tree felling for a pilgrim road
As per a news report by the Hindustan Times on May 30, the Uttar Pradesh state government told the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that 33,776 mature trees and 78,946 plants will be cut to construct a 111-km road along the Upper Ganga Canal, from Purkazi in Muzaffarnagar, via Sardhana and Jani in Meerut, and Muradnagar in Ghaziabad.
The UP state government gave this information in a detailed response to the NGT after the apex green court first heard the case on March 13 – a case which the Tribunal took up suo motu (on its own accord) after a news report said that more than 1 lakh trees and plants would need to be felled for the proposed road project that aims to ease the journeys of Kanwar pilgrims. The Kanwar pilgrimage is undertaken by devotees of the Hindu deity Shiva, in the months of July-August. As part of the religious tradition, pilgrims extract water from the River Ganga for worship, and transport it on their shoulders to other pilgrimage sites including Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Haridwar in Uttarakhand.
As per the HT report, the UP state’s responses to the NGT mentioned that “about 1 crore Kanwariyas travel to their homes along this route during the Kanwar Yatra held in the month of Shravan (July-August)”, as they justified why the road project – which will cost the state exchequer a whopping Rs. 658 crores – was necessary.
In total, trees and vegetation standing on 222.98 hectares in the three districts along the Uttar Pradesh-Uttarakhand border will be cleared for the road project. Per one report, the majority of forest area cleared for the project will be in UP’s Muzaffarnagar district (113.68 hectares), followed by Meerut (84.6 hectares) and Ghaziabad (24.7 hectares).
Compensatory afforestation in different districts
The HT news report also quoted the UP state government’s report to the NGT as saying that in lieu for the ~222 hectares of protected land being diverted for the road, “non-forest land or double degraded land” of around 445 hectares was unavailable in the districts of Ghaziabad, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar which will witness the large-scale felling of trees. Hence, such land has been identified in three other districts in the state: Lalitpur, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra. These districts, however, are hundreds of kms away from the districts of Ghaziabad, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar, where all vegetation loss will take place.
Per the state’s report, 4,84,720 tree saplings will be planted in Lalitpur, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts, and 21,028 plants will be planted in the Meerut district or forest division near the project. Compensatory afforestation will itself cost Rs. 28.6 crore, per the HT report.
As per another report, the state’s Public Works Department has also deposited Rs 1.5 crore to the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority.
During the case’s first hearing on March 13, HT reported that the NGT had directed the UP forest department and district magistrates of all the three districts involved to file details regarding the total numbers of trees and plants that need to be felled for the project.