The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has significantly revised the green-cover morals applicable to artificial estates in a move that aims to grease increased artificial exertion while conforming to environmental safeguards. According to the modification issued on 29 October 2025, new artificial estates are now needed to maintain a common green area of at least 10% of their total area, replacing the previous accreditation of 33%.
Under the revised guidelines, the demand is as follows for an artificial estate (including artificial premises, Export Processing Zones, Special Economic Zones, biotech premises, leather complexes, etc.): at least 10% of the estate’s total area must be designated as a “common green area” with a thick colony (roughly 2,500 trees per hectare). This area may be conterminous or spread over multiple easily terminated sections within the estate.
In addition to this estate-position demand, individual units within an estate must meet green-belt morals grounded on their pollution order. ‘Red order’ diligence (loftiest pollution eventuality) located within the estate must maintain a minimal green belt of 15 of their individual plots. ‘Orange order’ diligence must maintain 10. For the diligence classified as ‘Green’ or ‘White’ (minimum or negligible pollution eventuality), no obligatory green-belt chance is specified under the new morals.
For artificial units outside similar estates, the morals are stricter. Red order diligence must maintain 25 green belts, orange order 20, and green order 10. White-order units are pure from obligatory green-belt demand.
The explanation for the change, as reported, stems from enterprises about land-use effectiveness and advanced costs associated with the earlier demand. Assiduity groups had raised the issue that calling 33 green covers for all diligence anyhow of pollution implicitly meant a larger land area had to be acquired for the same product footprint—raising cost and land-vacuity pressures.
While the government frames the modification as a measure intended to “rationalise” green-cover morals and support the drive for manufacturing growth, environmental experts have raised caution. Reducing the obligatory green cover may compromise the softening effect that green belts give in mollifying pollution (air, noise), stabilising soil, and perfecting microclimate in and around artificial estates, especially in regions where artificial pollution is formerly high.
From a policy perspective, this move appears aligned with broader sweats to ease nonsupervisory burdens on assiduity—for illustration, the same panel of reforms recommended lowering the green-cover demand from 33-40 to 10 for artificial zones, citing exemplifications of other countries (Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan) with analogous or lower thresholds.
For stakeholders—and from a sustainability standpoint—several counteraccusations warrant attention.
• For artificial-estate inventors and land-allocating authorities, the reduced green-cover demand means further plot area can be made available for artificial units, reducing land-cost pressure and potentially accelerating the pace of establishing similar estates.
• For assiduity units, especially those in red or orange orders, while their individual green-belt demand remains (15 or 10 independently), the estate-position common green area is lower than before; this may reduce the cost burden of green-cover compliance.
• From the environmental-impact angle, the effectiveness of the green belt (in terms of air-pollution mitigation, noise reduction, cooling, and biodiversity) may be lowered if the overall green area is lower. The planting viscosity (2,500 trees per hectare) is specified, but the lower base chance means a lower area is allocated.
• From land-use planning and sustainability-reporting perspectives, this change underscores a trade-off between boosting manufacturing/artificial expansion vs maintaining larger green buffers around artificial clusters. For governments, diligence and ESG interpreters, this will bear close monitoring of how green-belt effectiveness is maintained in practice.
•It also raises questions about discriminational morals grounded on pollution orders. While green/white order units face minimum green-belt authorisations, the factual monitoring and enforcement will be pivotal to ensure that green-cover reductions don’t lead to erratic greening or green-washing.
In summary, the change by the MoEFCC lowers the obligatory green cover for artificial estates from 33 to 10 and introduces category-wise green belt scores for individual units. The move is designed to ease artificial expansion and reduce land-accession pressure but comes with environmental caution flags because of implicit counteraccusations for pollution mitigation and ecological softening around artificial zones. Enforcing agencies, estate inventors and diligence will now need to ensure that the reduced green-cover footprint is compensated by effective colony viscosity, species choice, conservation, and acceptable monitoring.
