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As the Financial Advisor for Rajasthan CAMPA, I often thought about the reasons responsible for average utilisation of Rajasthan CAMPA fund which stands at 68% over a six-year period (till FY 2024-25) against approved outlay. Recently the Supreme Court-appointed Centrally Empowered Committee highlighted that the national average is only 67.5% of the approved outlay (FY 2019-20 to 2023-24) it raises an important question ~ Why focusing solely on the unspent balances misses the critical root cause of the crisis?
The huge underutilization of these massive compensatory levies is, fundamentally, a symptom of fragmented planning, complex fund flow mechanisms, and inadequate monitoring and evaluation of CAMPA sites.
Fixing Inefficient Fund-Flow
The immediate bottleneck is the inefficient fund flow process. At present, a user agency deposits money for forest land diversion (as per the Van Sarankshan Adhiniyam 1980) via the MoEFFC-managed Parivesh portal to National CAMPA account first. It retains 10% and then transfers the remaining 90% to the State CAMPA public accounts contrary to Compensatory Afforestation Act 2016 which states that fund realized from user agencies to be credited directly into the State CAMPA Fund.
At the same time, State CAMPA accounts also have huge backlog of un-reconciled funds, primarily stemming from older, legacy forest diversion projects that predated the Parivesh portal’s 2018 introduction. To explain in simple terms, Fund reconciliation is matching project wise deposited money received in state CAMPA accounts with the approval sanction at the time of diversion of project proposals..
As verification of fund reconciliation is done at National CAMPA, as a result it doesn’t transfer the un-reconciled funds to state CAMPA accounts until reconciliation is done. Adding to that National CAMPA also delays the transfer of reconciled funds to states because of reasons best known to them.
To solve this, there is a need for elimination of the National Authority as an intermediary for state-bound funds. Funds should be transferred directly from the user agency to the State CAMPA account via the Parivesh portal. This restructuring directly aligns with the intent of the CAF Act 2016 and shortens the fund flow cycle.
Integrating Parivesh and Digital APO Portals
At one end, Parivesh portal streamlined the statutory approval of each project proposal for diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes at pre-determined cost structure such as Compensatory Afforestation(CA) and Net Present Value (NPV) to be paid through the same portal. And the utilisation of state CAMPA fund is planned and executed through an APO, which details physical milestones, estimated costs, and timelines. Crucially, this is where the recent digital initiative of National CAMPA toward the introduction of Digital APO Portal is indispensable and timely.There is an urgent requirement to explicitly link this new Digital APO portal with Parivesh 2.0.
Syncing these data flows allows stakeholders to oversee the physical progress of CAMPA activities and also enables to track every single rupee throughout the project’s lifecycle—from the user agency’s initial fund deposit to its final utilization for compensatory afforestation.
Addressing Financial Indiscipline
There is also a need to address the issue of financial indiscipline as reported in CAG audit report. Uttarakhand CAG Audit report for FY 2022-23 exposed how CAMPA funds are flagrantly treated as a ‘slush fund’ to substitute regular state budgets. In Uttarakhand, the state systematically reduced its own budgetary allocations for routine forestry activities, such as forest road repairs and soil conservation, and improperly shifted this financial burden onto CAMPA. Funds were also diverted for inadmissible expenditures.
Missing Land Bank and Need for Perspective Planning
There is systematic failure across State Forest Departments to create credible “land banks” of non-forest or degraded forest lands. This failure is a foundational bottleneck, forcing the selection of unsuitable land for afforestation and inevitably leading to project delays.
We must abandon the ad-hocism and short-sighted, year-to-year budgeting. National CAMPA mandates that states must develop 5 year Perspective Plans for Net Present Value (NPV) and Interest funds like a traditional forest “Working Plan,” ensuring financial requirements are forecasted and long-term ecological projects are sustained.
Real-Time Monitoring and Evaluation
The traditional internal monitoring mechanisms of forest departments have proven inadequate, as evidenced by various reported incidents of plantation failure at various sites. We need an uncompromised level of real-time accountability. This requires rigorous monitoring through GIS and Geo-Tagging of plantation sites. While field verification by departmental officers and third parties must supplement this.
All spatial data must be geo-tagged and uploaded to both the digital APO and the e-Green Watch portal. This triangulation of data, cross-referencing physical and financial claims with real-time satellite and drone data, is the only way to monitor and evaluate actual % of plant survival and to prevent fraudulent, duplicate claims.
A structural and operational overhaul is required to ensure these funds translate into genuine ecological assets.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
A well-written and insightful article. Your depth of knowledge and clarity of expression are commendable. Looking forward to reading more of your work.