Development of a city sometimes results in the loss of agricultural land. Years of development projects in UP has led to the diversion of agricultural land for the construction of roads, bridges and expressways.

Now, the Uttar Pradesh government is taking a strict stand in this matter and has drafted an environment policy which will check such diversion of agricultural land. It is the first ever environment policy of UP and is awaiting the approval of the cabinet.

With the implementation of this policy, it will become very difficult to use agricultural land for non agricultural purposes. In case such land is used for any other purpose, it would be mandatory to compensate for the loss of agricultural land by making fallow and degraded land agriculturally productive.

The draft of the environment policy has been finalized after taking the opinion and suggestions from government departments and the public. The draft policy states that any expansion of cities or development of new cities, if any, should be done on less productive land.

It also states that to cut down pressure on land resources, standards and techniques of construction should be amended to allow vertical construction and group housing besides encouraging the multi purpose use of non-residential buildings.

The draft policy will study the economic assessment of the environmental loss and will facilitate the conservation of land, water, air, forest, wildlife, bio-diversity, soil and wetlands in the state.