By Shivam Kumar Mishra
Image Source: Down to Earth
The central government on January 13, released the 17th edition of India’s State of Forest report prepared by the Forest Survey of India under the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change. The report presents the status of the forest and tree cover of the country, estimates of growing stock, mangrove cover, bamboo resources and an assessment of forest carbon stock.
The report mentions that the country’s forest and tree cover had increased over the last two years by 2,261 sq. km. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha and Karnataka are being applauded for their contribution to increasing the forest cover. Some states have a higher percentage, with 17 states and UTs recording as much as 33% of forest and tree cover. The total forest cover in the country is over 7 lakh sq km. The very dense forest areas have marginally increased too since 2019.
The figures and findings of the report show a positive trend but that is not the reality, experts believe the very definition of ‘forest’ is flawed. The FSI report has considered all tree patches that have a canopy density of more than 10% and are larger than one hectare, irrespective of their legal status as forests. It included plantations and monocultures as part of forests; coffee plantations, Sugar cane fields and coconut groves around the country were all covered in it.
The meaning of "forests" wasn't always this generous. The prior definition (before 2001) just counted "large continuous wooded lands as depicted by green wash on Survey of India toposheets" like forests. Regions outside these "were believed to have other land uses or potentially under private possession".
Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, an expert on using remote-sensing data in a tweet said,
“By this logic, wooded parks within cities with exotics greater than one hectare should be considered as a ‘forest patch’,” Srinivasan said. “I would say this is major green-washing and an attempt to show we have 33% tree cover.”
Experts are calling the report misleading and believe it is an attempt to push for climate change commitments under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change.
The second controversial part of the report is the methodology used for studying the forest cover. The FSI used the remote-sensing date as the primary method to detect the forest and tree cover. Its individuals examined satellite pictures and separated among vegetated and non-vegetated regions utilizing an action called the normalised difference vegetation index. Many believe that the ISFR report is just a quantification of green cover based on satellite imagery.
Kanchi Kohli, Senior researcher at the Centre For Policy Research and Environmental policy while talking to TOI said, “Forests have a social life and an ecological existence. They are such an economic asset as they are a cultural reality. A state of forests report needs to reflect forests with all their complexities, which it does not do. Instead, it is a stack of numbers that present a skewed and distorted picture about the state of India’s forests”.
Northeast India has been the worst affected region in terms of forest cover loss; the region showed a decrease of 1,020 sq km compared to the 2019 report.
All things considered, the decrease in forest cover in India's North East is the only 'terrible news' in the report which otherwise tends to pose a rose and positive image of India’s forest cover.
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