India, Sept. 10 -- Infrastructure projects - a big priority for Maharashtra - often get stalled or delayed when suitable land parcels are not easily found for afforestation, against forest land parcels needed for the projects. To resolve the issue, and stem rising project costs - which are inevitable due to delays -- the state government has prepared a land bank.

The bank details the available land in each district where trees can be planted to offset deforestation caused by infrastructure projects. It has 7,500 hectares of non-forest land and 33,056 hectares of degraded forest land (parcels that have lost significant bio-diversity and green cover), which the government feels will be sufficient for the next 10 years to implement various ...