First Sustainability Report of NHAI

• 09 Jun 2023

Why in News? 

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has recently released its first Sustainability Report for FY 2021-22. The report highlights NHAI's governance structure, stakeholders, environment, and social responsibility initiatives. 

• The Sustainability Report is prepared as per the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines and it will help attract ‘Green Finance’ for Infrastructure financing.  

What are the Key Findings of the Report? 

• Digitization of Highway Network:  
  • NHAI has developed ‘Data Lake Tool’ for digitizing the highway network in India, enabling NHAI to manage the vast amount of data generated by its infrastructure effectively. 
• Reduced Emissions: 
  • NHAI has reduced direct emissions and fuel consumption by 18.44% and 9.49%, respectively, from FY 2019-20 till 2021-22. 
  • GHG emissions from energy consumption, operations, transport, and travel saw a decline of 9.7% in FY 2020-21 and 2% in FY 2021-22. 
• Use of Recycled Materials:  
  • NHAI has been using recycled materials for national highway construction, including fly-ash, plastic waste, recycled asphalt (RAP), and recycled aggregates (RA). 
• Wildlife Crossings:  
  • More than 100 wildlife crossings were created in three years across 20 states as a measure for wildlife protection and conservation to reduce man-animal conflict. 
• Plantation: 
  • NHAI has undertaken plantation drives to develop eco-friendly national highways, planting around 2.74 crore saplings till 2021-22 to offset direct emissions from vehicles. 
• Inclusive Workforce: 
  • Women employment and employment of marginalized communities at NHAI have increased over the last three years. 
  • There has been a steady increase in female hiring by 7.4% and total increase of 3% in overall work force in three financial years. 

What is Global Reporting Initiative? 

• GRI is the independent, international organization that helps businesses and other organizations take responsibility for their impacts on environment.  
• It enables all companies and organisations to report their economic, environmental, social and governance performance. 
• The GRI Secretariat is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 

What is National Highways Authority of India?

• About: NHAI was set up under NHAI Act, 1988 under the administrative control of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH).
• Objective: It has been entrusted with the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), along with other minor projects for development, maintenance and management. 
  • NHDP is a project to upgrade, rehabilitate and widen major highways in India to a higher standard. The project was started in 1998. 
• Vision: To meet the nation’s need for the provision and maintenance of National Highways network to global standards and to meet user’s expectations in the most time bound and cost effective manner and promote economic well being and quality of life of the people. 

What is National Highways (NH)?

• NH are the arterial roads of the country for inter-state movement of passengers and goods. 
• They traverse the length and width of the country connecting the National and State capitals, major ports and rail junctions and link up with border roads and foreign highways. 
• According to MoRTH, there are 599 NH in India. 
  • The longest National Highway is NH44, which runs between Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, covering a distance of 3,806 km (2,365 mi).
• According to Basic Road Statictics 2018-19, National Highways (Total length-1,32,499 kms) constitutes 2.09 % of total road network in the country and carry about 40% of the road traffic.
  • Maharashtra has the largest network of National Highways (13.4%) followed by Uttar Pradesh (8.9 %) and Rajasthan (7.8 %). 

 UPSC Civil Services Examination, Previous Year Question (PYQ)

Prelims:

Q. Consider the following pairs: (2014)

National Highway : Cities connected

1. NH 4 : Chennai and Hyderabad
2. NH 6 : Mumbai and Kolkata
3. NH 15 : Ahmedabad and Jodhpur

Which of the above pairs is/are correctly matched?

(a) 1 and 2 only 
(b) 3 only
(c) 1, 2 and 3
(d) None

Ans: (d)

Exp:

• In 2010, GoI replaced the old system of numbering of national highways with a new system. According to the new system:
  • NH 4 connects Port Blair with Mayabandar in Andaman Islands. Hence, pair 1 is not correctly
  • matched.
  • NH 6 connects Jorabat (Meghalaya) with Aizawl (Mizoram). Hence, pair 2 is not correctly matched.
  • NH 15 connects Baihata-Charali (Assam) with Wakro (Arunachal Pradesh). Hence, pair 3 is not correctly matched.
• Therefore, option (d) is the correct answer.

Source: ET