Environmental governance in India: EIA, the NGT, CAMPA and forest clearances

On July 13, 2026, the Union environment ministry notified two orders that restructure how a large share of India’s industrial and infrastructure projects get environmental clearance. From mining leases and thermal plants to ports and large construction, almost every significant project in India must now pass through a screening system built on the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006, answer to the National Green Tribunal (NGT), pay for the forests it diverts through CAMPA, and take forest clearance under the amended Forest Conservation Act. This article explains how those four institutions work, what has changed in 2024-26, and where the system is under strain.

What environmental governance means

Environmental governance is the set of laws, institutions, processes and accountability systems through which the state regulates the impact of human activity on air, water, land, forests and wildlife. It has three working parts. The ex-ante part screens projects before they begin: the EIA process and forest clearance. The ex-post part punishes and repairs damage after it happens: the NGT, pollution control boards and compensation orders. The restorative part rebuilds what development destroys: compensatory afforestation through CAMPA.

For UPSC, this topic sits at the intersection of governance and statutory bodies. Questions test whether you know who appraises what (EAC versus SEAC), who grants what (SEIAA versus the ministry), which court hears environmental civil cases (the NGT, not the High Court, in the first instance), and where the money for replanting forests actually comes from and why so much of it lies unspent.

The EIA regime: how India screens projects

An Environment Impact Assessment is a study that predicts how a proposed project will affect the environment, and proposes measures to avoid, reduce or offset that impact. India’s EIA regime comes from the EIA Notification, 2006, issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Certain categories of projects, from mining and thermal power to ports, airports, highways and large construction, cannot begin construction or operation without prior environmental clearance.

The notification decentralised clearance into two categories. Category A projects are appraised at the central level: an Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) advises, and the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) grants or refuses clearance. Category B projects are handled at the state level, where a State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) appraises and a State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) decides. Category B is further screened into B1 (which mandatorily requires a full EIA report) and B2 (which does not require an EIA report and is appraised on the application form and pre-feasibility report).

Clearance moves through four stages. Screening decides whether a project needs assessment at all and, for Category B, whether it is B1 or B2. Scoping fixes the terms of reference: what the EIA study must cover. Public consultation gives affected people a hearing, conducted by the State Pollution Control Board. Appraisal is the detailed scrutiny of the EIA report and public hearing record, after which clearance is granted, usually with conditions, or refused. Category A projects skip screening because clearance is mandatory for them.

Two design features matter for exams. First, the EAC and SEAC are advisory bodies: they recommend, but the regulatory authority that actually grants or refuses clearance is the MoEFCC for Category A and the SEIAA for Category B. Second, certain classes of projects, including those concerning national defence and security, are exempt from public consultation.

The 2026 restructuring of environmental clearance

On July 13, 2026, the MoEFCC notified two orders that restructure state-level clearance. S.O. 3862(E) amends the EIA Notification, 2006 to constitute a Standing Authority on Environment Impact Assessment (SAEIA) and a Standing Committee on Environment Impact Appraisal (SCEIA) for each state and Union Territory, replacing the older SEIAA and SEAC arrangement. S.O. 3863(E) fixes their composition. A draft of these amendments had been published for public comment on March 5, 2026, with the final composition left undefined in the draft and spelled out only in the final notification.

The debate around the change is instructive. Supporters argue that permanent standing bodies bring continuity and speed to a system that has struggled with the ad-hoc reconstitution of SEIAAs and SEACs, which often left states without functioning appraisal bodies for months. Critics question whether the composition defined in S.O. 3863(E) preserves enough independent scientific expertise, since the credibility of the entire clearance system rests on appraisal committees that can say no to powerful projects. For mains answers, this is a live illustration of the ease of doing business versus the precautionary principle tension that runs through all of environmental governance.

The National Green Tribunal

The National Green Tribunal is a specialised tribunal established under Section 3 of the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, to hear applications and appeals on environmental matters. Its principal bench sits at New Delhi, and its zonal benches sit at Kolkata, Bhopal, Chennai and Pune, giving it a presence across the country’s regions.

The NGT’s defining feature is its composition: every bench combines judicial members with expert members who have scientific qualifications and experience, so that complex technical disputes are decided with both legal and scientific rigour. The Act envisages up to 10 judicial and 10 expert members, including the chairperson. In practice the tribunal has run chronically short-staffed: by August 2026 it was working with roughly half its sanctioned strength, around four judicial members and six experts, prompting Supreme Court orders extending member tenures while appointments were processed.

The tribunal’s jurisdiction covers civil cases involving a substantial question relating to the environment, arising from the implementation of the enactments listed in Schedule I of the Act: the Water Act, the Water Cess Act, the Forest (Conservation) Act, the Air Act, the Environment (Protection) Act, the Public Liability Insurance Act and the Biological Diversity Act. It can grant relief, compensation and restitution, order restoration of damaged property and environment, and direct the payment of environmental compensation under the polluter-pays principle. The Act requires it to dispose of applications and appeals within six months, and appeals against its orders lie to the Supreme Court under Section 22.

Two orders show the NGT’s reach and its limits. In 2015 it ordered that diesel vehicles older than ten years could not ply in Delhi, an order that was stayed within weeks amid pushback but which forced air pollution onto the national agenda. In 2016-17 it imposed ₹5 crore in environmental compensation on the organisers of a large cultural event held on the Yamuna floodplains for ecological damage; in August 2026 the Supreme Court set that order aside and directed a refund, while directing the Delhi Development Authority to continue rehabilitation of the floodplains from its own funds. The trajectory captures both the tribunal’s power to price environmental damage and the appellate scrutiny its orders attract: over 40 per cent of significant NGT orders have faced Supreme Court challenge in recent years.

Reform pressure is building. The 19th Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee (March 2025) recommended a statutory amendment to bring the Wildlife Protection Act and the Forest Rights Act within the NGT’s jurisdiction, and to create eight new regional benches in environmentally sensitive zones such as the Northeast, the Western Ghats and the Himalayan states. Wildlife and forest-rights cases currently sit outside the tribunal’s reach, a jurisdictional gap that UPSC frequently probes.

CAMPA and compensatory afforestation

Compensatory afforestation is the principle that forest land diverted to non-forest use, for mining, roads, dams or industry, must be compensated by raising forests on an equivalent area of non-forest land or twice the area of degraded forest land. The money for this comes from the project developer, who pays Net Present Value (NPV) for the ecological services lost plus the cost of raising the plantation. CAMPA, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority, is the statutory body created under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016 to manage and plan the use of this money.

The architecture has three tiers. The National CAMPA, advised by the National CAMPA Advisory Council, receives the funds and releases them to states. Each state has a State CAMPA with a governing body and steering committee that approves an annual plan of operations and monitors utilisation. Money flows from the user agency into the State Fund and is meant to be spent on compensatory afforestation, catchment treatment, wildlife habitat improvement and related conservation work, with internal and third-party monitoring of plantation survival.

Utilisation is the system’s chronic weakness. In a Lok Sabha reply of March 23, 2026, the environment ministry stated that ₹12,515.30 crore of CAMPA funds remained unutilised as on March 31, 2025, attributing delays mainly to state governments not releasing approved money to their forest departments in time. A Supreme Court-mandated Central Empowered Committee report (August 2025) found that while about 85 per cent of the 2019-23 afforestation target had been met (1,78,261 hectares against 2,09,297), only 67.5 per cent of the funds released had actually been used, with states like Tamil Nadu and Delhi spending far below the national average. Plantations without post-plantation care, critics note, produce hectares on paper but not forests on the ground.

Forest and wildlife clearances

Before forest land can be used for a mine, road or power line, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 requires the prior approval of the central government for diversion of that land to non-forest purposes. The Act is the gatekeeper of India’s recorded forests: without central clearance, no state can de-reserve a forest or lease forest land for non-forestry use. Wildlife clearances run on a parallel track through the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, with the National Board for Wildlife and state boards clearing projects in and around protected areas.

The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 substantially rewrote this gatekeeping. It renamed the law the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980, inserted a preamble committing India to preserving forests, their biodiversity and tackling climate change, and clarified that the Act applies to lands notified or recorded as forest in government records. It then carved out a set of exemptions: forest land within 100 km of international borders, the Line of Actual Control and the Line of Control used for strategic linear projects and security infrastructure; up to 0.1 hectare for road and rail connectivity to habitations; up to 10 hectares for security-related infrastructure; and up to 5 hectares in Left Wing Extremism-affected districts for public utility projects. Zoos, safaris and eco-tourism facilities with approved plans, along with infrastructure for frontline forest staff, were recognised as forestry activities, and government companies were brought on par with private entities for leasing forest land.

The amendment split opinion sharply. The government argued it removes ambiguities, speeds up strategic and security projects, and promotes plantations and green cover in line with India’s net-zero commitments. Conservationists warned that narrowing the Act’s applicability and widening exemptions risks precisely the deemed forests, lands that function as forest but were never formally notified, that the Supreme Court’s 1996 Godavarman judgment had brought under protection. A later rules change extending NPV and compensatory afforestation charge exemptions to commercial plantations set up by private firms deepened the same debate: whether treating plantations as forestry activity grows India’s green cover or simply subsidises industry at the forest’s expense.

Where the system is headed

Step back and the pattern is clear: India is centralising speed and decentralising scrutiny at the same time. The 2026 clearance restructuring creates permanent standing bodies in every state, the 2023 forest amendment exempts strategic and small works from the clearance queue, and commercial plantations are being nudged out of the NPV net, all in the name of faster project execution. Running the other way are the NGT’s compensation jurisprudence, the Standing Committee’s push to widen the tribunal’s jurisdiction, and the persistent scandal of unspent CAMPA money.

For mains, frame this as a governance problem, not just an environment problem. The recurring questions are institutional: who has the expertise to say no (the composition of appraisal committees), who watches the money (CAMPA’s unutilised thousands of crores), who hears the citizen (the NGT’s benches and vacancies), and whether the law protects forests as ecosystems or as land records. Any answer that moves between these four institutions, with current data attached, will read as written by someone who follows the subject rather than memorises it.

Key Terms

• Environment Impact Assessment: A study that predicts a project’s likely environmental effects and proposes measures to avoid, reduce or offset them; the basis of prior environmental clearance under the EIA Notification, 2006.

• Prior environmental clearance: The mandatory approval a listed project must obtain before beginning construction or operation, granted by the MoEFCC (Category A) or the SEIAA/SAEIA (Category B).

• Category A / B1 / B2: The EIA Notification’s classification of projects; Category A is appraised centrally by the EAC, Category B at state level by the SEAC, with B1 requiring a full EIA report and B2 exempt from it.

• EAC / SEAC / SAEIA / SCEIA: Expert Appraisal Committee (Centre), State Expert Appraisal Committee, and, from the July 2026 orders, the Standing Authority and Standing Committee on EIA for each state and UT.

• National Green Tribunal: The specialised tribunal under the NGT Act, 2010 that hears civil cases involving a substantial question relating to the environment, combining judicial and expert members.

• Polluter-pays principle: The doctrine that the party responsible for environmental damage must bear the cost of managing it and compensating victims; applied by the NGT in ordering environmental compensation.

• CAMPA: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority, the statutory body under the 2016 Act that manages money collected from developers for forests diverted to non-forest use.

• Net Present Value (NPV): The monetary value of the ecological services a diverted forest would have provided, charged to the project developer and routed into CAMPA funds.

• Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980: The renamed Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 after the 2023 amendment, with new exemptions for border strategic projects and small public works.

• Deemed forests: Lands that function as forests but were never formally notified as such; the Supreme Court’s 1996 Godavarman order brought them under the Forest (Conservation) Act’s protection.

Practice questions