BackIndia’s green cover has advanced far too slowly
The 2021 update of our forest survey has reported modest gains over two years. We must aim for faster progress. Let carbon capture play a supportive role in attaining net zero emissions
PremiumAt first glance, the latest India State of Forest Report is heartening. Since the count of 2019, we have gained tree coverage of 2,261 more square kilometres overall, according to the Forest Survey of India’s 2021 update released last week by the ministry of environment, forests and climate change. Most of this was forest expansion, reported at 1,540-sq-km. With 809,000-sq-km of Indian territory and hence almost a quarter of our official map now climate-friendly, our green cover has advanced. A country that had a Gandhian Chipko Andolan to save trees well before the current hurly-burly over carbon exhaust versus capture, however, must hold itself to finer standards and look at the report’s data more closely, lest we miss the wood for the boughs. If net deforestation is not an official worry (some critics dispute the readings), at least the pace of advancement should worry us. At 0.22% over the two years since 2019’s estimate, our forest sprawl has slowed to a crawl, compared to the 0.94% growth found in 2017 by this biennial survey. When New Delhi set a target of 33% forest cover under the Indian Forest Policy of 1988, we had no emission-neutrality aim. After the CoP-26 summit held in Glasgow, we actually do, and so laxity on this front imposes an increasingly material cost.
Disputants of official metrics argue that our scanners label forests on satellite scans a tad too easily. So, what does the survey’s data sliced by arboreal density show? ‘Open’ forests, which include plantations such as those of coconut or coffee, have expanded modestly. But sadly, our somewhat thicker ‘moderately dense’ forests have seen a decline. Natural coverage, with its wealth of flora and fauna, has retreated across large swathes. The blame for these losses, most acute in our northeastern states, lies with both human activities and natural calamities. Very dense jungles (with a canopy cover of 70% or more) have fared relatively well, the report says, thanks to conservation efforts in reserve forest and other areas under protection. This may sound like a relief, as thick vegetation does the best job of absorbing carbon from the air. However, such green saturation makes up less than a seventh of the 713,789-sq-km of India deemed to be forested now. Dense expansion needs to be paced up steeply if we are to make effective progress. Moreover, this must be done even as forests themselves turn vulnerable to the effects of a warming planet. The Himalayas’ leaf cover, ecologists warn, has already begun to display signs of stress at various altitude belts. In this context, activists have opposed any tweaks of the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 that may ease the diversion of forest land for other uses. India’s recent refusal to sign a pledge at CoP-26 to “halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030" drew some criticism too, but New Delhi had a valid objection to cross-border trade being mixed up with green goals.
Even so, as global warming at its trajectory recorded last year would threaten the planet’s future, forestation must play an effective role in our climate strategy. Emission clamps on the use of fossil fuels, after all, are not the be-all and end-all of mitigation. Globally, forests are said to absorb a net 7.6 billion tonnes of CO2 every year. But India’s 2015 commitment to adding a carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes by 2030 looks not just like an equivocal aim, sans base-year data, but an ambition overleap. Even if the ‘carbon stock’ held by Indian trees has risen, our leafy shield just isn’t moving fast enough.
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