For the first time, Supreme Court on Thursday submitted a report, setting a guideline, on the valuation of trees that a tree's monetary worth is its age multiplied by rupees 74,500. Out of this, the cost of oxygen alone is ₹45,000 followed by the cost of biofertilizers, which are worth ₹20,000.
The five-member committee of experts added that a heritage tree with a lifespan of well over 100 years could be valued at more than ₹ 1 crore and that the monetary value of a project, for which hundreds of trees are cut, is sometimes far less than the economic and environmental worth of the felled trees, Hindustan times reported.
The report was submitted before a Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde, that had asked the committee members in January 2020 to determine the economic value of trees, based on the cost of oxygen they release, and other benefits to the environment.
The bench, which also included justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, stressed the necessity to do away with the evaluation of trees only on the basis of their timber value and rather focus on the positive impact of trees on the environment.
For this purpose, the court, while hearing a case relating to cutting down of 356 trees for the construction of five railway over-bridges (ROBs) in West Bengal, appointed a committee of five experts — Nishikant Mukerji (managing director, Tiger Environment Centre), Soham Pandya, (secretary and executive director at the Centre of Science for Villages), Sunita Narain (director, Centre for Science and Environment), Bikash Kumar Maji (assistant chief engineer, ROB unit, West Bengal government) and Niranjita Mitra (division forest officer, North 24 Parganas).
The Supreme Court has not accepted the report yet, and sought responses from the central government, West Bengal government, and an NGO involved in the case."The committee's recommendation will make every government go bankrupt. So, we need to fine-tune a few suggestions," the court observed on Wednesday.
The committee also suggested that instead of cutting trees for highway projects, the governments should first explore alternatives such as using existing waterways and railway lines to facilitate traffic and transport infrastructure.
The top court further expressed its displeasure at a central government notification that did away with the need for an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for a road project of less than 100km.
