Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Shri Prakash Javadekar on January 11, 2021 released Management Effectiveness Evaluation (MEE) of 146 National Park and Wildlife Sanctuaries in the country.
- At present, India has a network of 903 Protected Areas in the country covering about five per cent of the total geographic area of the country.
- In order to assess the efficacy of Protected Areas, evaluation of management effectiveness is required.
- The overall mean MEE score of 62.01% is higher than the global mean of 56%.
- With this round of evaluation, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) successfully completed one full cycle of evaluating all terrestrial National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries of the country from 2006 to 2019.
- MEE is a very important document that provides valuable guidance on various aspects of wildlife and protected area expand MEE of Marine Protected Areas.
- A new framework for MEE of Marine Protected Areas has been also jointly prepared by WII and MoEF&CC and it will be very useful document to implement.
- He said, 70 per cent of the global tiger population, 70 per cent of Asiatic lions and more than 60 per cent of leopard’s population in India is a certificate of India’s thriving biodiversity.
- The Minister also announced that from this year onwards ten best National Parks, five Coastal and Marine parks and top five Zoos in the country will be ranked and awarded every year.
- MEE-ZOO: Mr Javadekar also launched the Management Effectiveness Evaluation of Indian Zoos ( MEE-ZOO) framework which proposes guidelines, criteria and indicators for evaluation of zoos of the country.
