The Site Specific Wildlife Conservation Plan Guidelines is issued by the Odisha Forest Department required to get approval of Government of India for diversion of forest land under Forest Conservation Act’1980.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has released notification on 'Corporate Environment Responsibility'  as the guidelines on the amount of money that companies seeking environmental clearances (ECs) need to spend on corporate environment responsibility (CER). The money to be spent on CER is over and above what is required by companies to implement the Environmental Management Plan(EMP). Companies seeking Environmental Clearance(EC) to expand the capacity of projects (brownfield projects), would be required to earmark 0.125% – 1% of the capital investment on CER. The slab for new projects (greenfield projects), is in the range of 0.25% – 2% of capital investment.

MoeF&CC issued guidelines, dated 29/01/2018, on the activities which constitutes violations of provisions of Forest Conservation Act 1980 and rules made thereof and guidelines issued in this behalf, by user agencies and quantum of penalty to be imposed —regarding common guideline to be followed by FAC/REC while considering the proposal under Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980. These violations have been categorised in five sections:

i. In case where the proposal under the FC has not been submitted and forest land is diverted without FC.

ii. In case where the proposal under the FC is under consideration and forest land is diverted before grant of FC.

iii. Violations/Non-compliance of any conditions imposed while granting approval under FC Act. 

iv. Violations on account of change of land use in the approved mining plan

v. In cases where 'forest lands' has been changed to 'non-forest lands' in government records. 

 On 10th August 2018, PARIVESH (Pro Active and Responsive facilitation by Interactive and Virtuous Environmental Singlewindow Hub) is a web based, role based workflow application which has been developed for online submission and monitoring of the proposals submitted by the proponents for seeking Environment, Forest, Wildlife and CRZ Clearances from Central, State and district level authorities. It automates the entire tracking of proposals which includes online submission of a new proposal, editing/updating the details of proposals and displays status of the proposals at each stage of the workflow.  

High Conservation Value Forests (HCVFs) are forests that contain certain attributes (values) that are of critical conservation priority (like rare or threatened habitats or important cultural sites).  This ProForest HCVF Toolkit categorises High Conservation Value Forests (HCVFs)  is six categories and provides a detailed framework on how to define each of the six types of High Conservation Value.

Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has issued the guidance document on ‘Eco-friendly measures to mitigate negative impacts on wildlife values from linear infrastructure development projects’ prepared by Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. This document provides a standard template on structural and non-structural measures for mitigating the impact of roads, railway lines and power lines on wildlife including avifauna. 

National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to submit a report on constitution of Biodiversity Management Committees (BMC) at the local level in every state. 

It was submitted that in 2,52,709 panchayats where Biodiversity Management Committees were to be constituted a total of 1,44,371 BMCs have been formed, which shows a gap of more than one lakh. With respect to People Biodiversity Registers, 6,834 have been documented so far and another 1,814 are in progress. 

On 26 September, the President of Gabon – His Excellency Ali Bongo Ondimba announced that all forest concessions operating in Gabon will have to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international certification scheme by 2022. FSC advocates socially equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically viable forest management. Forest concessions that have not entered the FSC forest certification assessment process by the target date will have their permits withdrawn.