India and the World Bank will sign agreement for cleaning the Ganga River AND Biodiversity.

The Government of India and the World Bank will sign an agreement  for cleaning the Ganga River.

•  The Project has an estimated cost of Rs 7,000 crore.
• The share of the Government of India will be Rs 5,100 crore and
• that of the five state governments (Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal) will be Rs 1,900 crore.
• The World Bank will support the Government of India by providing technical assistance and finance. The assistance would be in form of a loan of $801 million from IBRD and a credit of $199 million from IDA.

The Ganga basin accounts for nearly one-fourth of the country’s landmass

•  and the basin is home to more than 400 million people. The Ganga faces great challenges from expanding population, urbanization and industrial growth.
• The National Ganga River Basin Project will be implemented with the assistance of the World Bank.
• The Project will focus on building and strengthening the NGRBA’s related institutions at the Central and state level; establishing a world-class Ganga Knowledge Centre;
• enhancing river basin management; and financing select priority investments to reduce point-source pollution in a sustainable manner.

A comprehensive approach will be adopted under which industrial pollution; solid waste management, and riverfront management, essential sewage treatment will also be addressed. Dedicated institutional mechanisms will be established in order to plan, prioritize and manage these investments for the long term.


The agreements for the Biodiversity Conservation and Rural Livelihood Improvement Project were signed by Mr. Venu Rajamony, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, on behalf of the Government of India, and Mr. Roberto Zagha, World Bank Country Director in India in presence of Mr Jairam Ramesh, Minister Environment and Forests, Government of India.

India is home to 8% of the world’s biodiversity.

•  The challenge is to maintain this rich biodiversity under pressure from increased population and demand on resources.
•  BCRLIP will be implemented at two biodiversity rich landscapes, namely, (1) Little Rann of Kachchh,Gujarat and (2) Askot landscape,Uttarakhand.
•  BCRLIP is unique in more ways than one. It breaks new ground in envisioning a multi sector, multi theme project on a landscape which has often been talked about but not addressed before in a time bound project mode. The project will strengthen the Government of India’s efforts to conserve high-value biodiversity areas while improving the livelihoods of dependent communities.
• It will conserve biodiversity, while improving rural livelihoods by applying culturally appropriate and tested participatory approaches to support opportunities for improving rural livelihoods. The government policy aims to expand conservation action beyond the Protected Areas (PAs) boundaries to make sure that development around protected areas is carried out in a manner that is more consistent with biodiversity conservation and sustainable livelihood development objectives.
• The project was negotiated on 22ndMarch, 2011 and was approved by the World Bank Board on 17thMay, 2011-

 

 

In recent years, the Government of India (GOI) and several states has established a network of more than 600 protected areas across different ecosystems and bioregions to conserve the country’s unique biodiversity and natural habitats. However, there are constraints to the viability and effectiveness of the conservation of the existing PAs. These PAs are largely managed as “islands” surrounded by other forms of land use that are often not compatible with conservation goals. The absence of an integrated land and natural resource use focus, particularly for areas surrounding the PAs has constrained conservation strategies to reduce threats to biodiversity. The project promotes a more focused and holistic approach that attempts to integrate development and land-related concerns with biodiversity conservation within the PAs and surrounding lands

The World Bank has been a major financier of biodiversity projects globally and has supported innovative participatory models of biodiversity conservation in and around protected areas. This experience has allowed unique perspective in piloting and replicating management approaches that integrate conservation and production landscapes within the framework of sustainable land and natural resource management. The project will last six years with core activities undertaken by communities themselves. Total outlay of the project is US$30.52million (Rs 137.34 crores) and is going to be funded by 26.7% GEF grant US$ 8.14million (Rs 36.36crores); 50.3% IDA credit US$ 15.36million (Rs 69.12crores), the credit carries a 0.75% service charge, a maturity of 35 years and a grace period of 10 years; 19.9% Government of India/State US$ 6.06mill (Rs 27.27 crores) and 3.2% Beneficiaries US$ 0.96million (Rs 4.32crore).