Tamil Nadu State Environment Policy 2017.

The Tamil Nadu State Environment Policy 2017 prepared by the Department of Environment, Government of Tamil Nadu follows the Vision Tamil Nadu 2023 launched by the Government of Tamil Nadu, which identifies preservation of ecology and heritage as a key underlying the Vision Tamil Nadu 2023. The State Policy is the outcome of extensive consultations with Experts in different disciplines. The Department of Environment undertook extensive consultations and constituted four sub-committees to provide inputs to this Policy on Industry, Coastal Management, Natural Resources and Institutional Framework. The objectives of the Policy are to: 1. Conserve, Nurture and Renew Environmental Resources essential for habitat and life-support, livelihoods, economic growth, quality of life and human well-being; 2. Integrate environmental well-being into developmental programmes, including poverty alleviation, inclusive economic growth and social well-being; 3. Enhance preparedness to deal with climate change impacts through a systematic approach and implement relevant adaptation/mitigation mechanisms taking into account priorities identified under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC); 4. Improve Environment Governance and institutional capacity involving articulation of a comprehensive policy framework and enforce environmental legislation, policy, standards and safeguards.
The Government of Tamil Nadu (GoTN) has formulated the Vision TN 2023 with the aim of catapulting Tamil Nadu onto a higher economic growth trajectory, while ensuring that it benefits all sections of society. By 2023, Tamil Nadu aspires to become India’s most prosperous and progressive State with no poverty, and where its people enjoy all the basic services of a modern society and live in harmonious engagement with the environment and with the rest of the world. Integrate environmental well-being into developmental programmes by weaving environmental considerations into policy formulation, planning and implementation of developmental programmes and projects in an environmentally sustainable manner, while achieving other positive developmental outcomes including poverty alleviation, inclusive economic growth and social well-being.
Government is giving thrust to preserve the prime agricultural lands and control its diversion for non- agricultural purposes by recommending suitable and profitable cropping system, reclamation of problem soils, identification and conversion of fallow lands for agriculture, increasing the productivity of agricultural lands by village based Integrated Nutrient Management through stratified soil sampling and analysis, promotion of organic farming, integrated farming, diversified farming, rainfed area development and appropriate market linkages to enable the farmers to take up agriculture as a lucrative profession. GoTN would initiate measures to augment water sources for farmers (while enabling increase of area under cultivation from the current levels) through extensive expansion of watershed development programmes and creation of rain-water harvesting structures, so as to make water available for agriculture in a sustainable manner without excessive ground water abstraction beyond recharge potential.
The GoTN accords the highest priority to preserve, protect its ecological footprint and environmental resources, in light of the responsibility placed upon it as per Section 48 of the Constitution of India which specifies that “the State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the Country”. The land-use policy would accord priority to protection and preservation of vulnerable ecosystems including forests, bio-reserves, wetlands, coastal ecosystems and other such habitats critical to the environmental health of the State.