New Delhi: The Environment Ministry will work as a facilitator of sustainable development by bringing transparency, removing bottlenecks and encouraging people's participation, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said Monday.
"The ministry, which was till now considered to be a speed-breaker or roadblock ministry, will now be a facilitating ministry for sustainable development... The ministry was known for licence-quota Raj, we will change that into a ministry with people's participation," Javadekar said.
He was speaking at the launch of his Ministry's e-book, "Development without Destruction".
Outlining his Ministry's vision for 2015, Javedekar said sustainable development without destruction, green growth and poverty eradication were the principles that would guide the initiatives and policies of the ministry.
"Bringing transparency in processes, bringing time bound disposal of applications, stress on compliance through monitoring, public participation, priority for greening the degraded forest, providing ease of doing business by removing bottlenecks are being given high priority," he said.
The minister said India will also effectively put forward its stand in the 'Conference of Parties-CoP21' scheduled to be held in Paris this year.
Stressing that people's participation was "central" to the developmental process, Javedekar said his ministry would initiate several public campaigns for turning degraded lands into urban greens, making the environment plastic-bag free, restoration of lakes and rivers. And youths would be the special focus of these campaigns.
The e-book captures some of the important initiatives taken by the Environment Ministry in the last nine months.
Elaborating the work done by his Ministry after the new government took charge, Javadekar said the Ministry has started online submission of applications for environment, forest and CRZ approvals while defence and other projects of strategic importance have been given immediate go-ahead.
