Editorial: Robbing Peter to pay Paul

NEW DELHI: Per the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023, India's forest and tree cover has touched 8.27 lakh sq km or 25% of the country's total geographical area. Data released by the government recently said that the increase of 25.17% could be broken down to 21.76% of forest cover (encompassing 7.15 lakh sq km) and 3.41% of tree cover (spread over 1,12 lakh sq km). This marks an increase of 1,445.8 sq km in 2023, as compared to the last assessment in 2021. The Forest Survey of India (FSI) denotes forest cover as land with tree canopy density exceeding 10% and covering an area of at least one hectare (which brings even plantations under the ambit of the ISFR report). In order to maintain ecological stability, at least 33% of the country's geographical area should be under forest cover, the National Forest Policy of 1988 tells us.

The highest increase in forest, tree cover was reported in Chhattisgarh (683 sq km), UP (559 sq km), Odisha (558 sq km) and Rajasthan (394 sq km). The worst decline was reported in Karnataka, Ladakh, Nagaland and Madhya Pradesh, which since 2021, has boasted of the largest area under forest and tree cover (85,724 sq km). The recent report also details that India has augmented its carbon sink by 2.29 billion tonnes over 2005 levels. The nation's Nationally Determined Contributions towards the Paris Agreement targets necessitate the creation of an additional carbon sink of at least 2.5 bn tonnes by 2030.

Environmentalists aren't as chuffed about the findings as they have remarked that much of the growth has taken place in trees that fall outside of the designated forest areas. The inclusion of orchards, bamboo and palm plantations has also stuck out like a sore thumb among conservationists who lamented that the net rise in forest cover is only 0.05%. It is worth recalling that between the 2021 and 2023 forest surveys, the Centre passed the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, which was criticised by activists for having diluted the definition of forest. Civil society leaders have also called out the Act for the detrimental changes incorporated into the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, which includes the removal of deemed and community forests from under the purview of the Act.

What has flown under the radar of this survey is the forest cover loss in such critical biodiversity-rich regions such as the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris and the Northeast, the depletion of the mangroves in the Kutch as well as the Andamans, of moderately dense forests, along with the degradation of open natural ecosystems. Experts point out that loss of forest regions in biodiverse areas cannot be compensated with plantations in other regions, especially when these include commercial plantations with lower ecological and sequestration value. A case in point is the report from last year which said close to three million trees are at risk of being felled in order to build infrastructure as part of the Great Nicobar Mega Project. What is laughable is that the compensatory afforestation project to offset the loss of green cover in Nicobar entails bestowing protected forest status on 26,000 hectares of the Aravallis in Haryana. It’s high time the government realises that bending over backwards to accommodate economic progress even at the cost of environmental damage is a loser’s game.