India’s forest cover rises to over 21%

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Textbook reference : Geography - Chapter 4 Forest Resources - Forest
Areas (Page 16)

Continuing the commendable trend of the past decade, India's forest
cover increased by 728 sq km during 2005-07 — a marginal rise of
0.03%. Overall, 21.02% of the country's geographical area is now under
green cover. In the 10 years, forest cover in the country has
increased by 3.31 million hectares, showing an average 0.46% increase
every year.

These figures are contained in the State of Forest Report 2009,
released by environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday. The biennial
report is based on satellite imagery up to 2007.

Ramesh said India's increasing forest cover deserved praise,
especially when compared to the loss of 2.5 million ha of forests in
Brazil every year. India, however, lagged behind China's achievement
of gaining 4 million ha of forests annually.

While India seemed to be doing well in protecting dense forests, the
report indicated that moderately dense forests weren't faring too
well. These are forests, which lie mostly outside the national parks
and sanctuaries. Between 2005-07, dense forest area increased by 38 sq
km but 936 sq km of moderate forest got degraded.

The report will add weight to India's demand at the Copenhagen climate
talks that countries increasing their forest cover — which work as
sinks to capture carbon — should be rewarded. The debate in climate
negotiations has till now tended to favour rewarding only nations
which are able to reduce their rate of deforestation — typically
countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. But India and others have
contended that this provides a perverse incentive to others to first
cut their forests and then reduce the rate of destruction.
Indicating that some benefits may come the way of hill states, the
minister said Himalayan states were carrying much of the burden of
maintaining the green lungs for the country. For the first time, the
assessment report brought out data of forest cover as percentage of
geographical area that can actually bear forests.

Regions above 4,000 metres from sea level ecologically do not have
forests. This significantly alters the forest cover in five hill
states. If areas above the tree line are kept out of calculations,
forest cover in Himachal Pradesh increases to 44% from 27%, Arunachal
Pradesh to 88% from 82%, Jammu and Kashmir to 33% from 12%, Sikkim to
84% from 46% and Uttarakhand to 59% from 47%.

The presence of Vijay Kelkar, chairman of the 13th Finance Commission,
at the release of the report indicated that the Centre might again
suggest a formula to share some revenues based on forest cover as was
done under the 10th Finance Commission.

The biggest losses in forest cover, in absolute terms, were recorded
in Andhra Pradesh (129 sq km), Assam (66 sq km) and Chhattisgarh (59
sq km).

The Northeast, which contains one-forth of India's forest cover, is
peculiar due to traditional practices of shifting cultivation that
make a steady assessment difficult. While Mizoram saw a gain of 640 sq
km and Manipur of 328 sq km, Nagaland suffered a loss of 201 sq km and
Tripura 100 sq km to swidden agriculture.

West of the chicken neck region, Jharkhand surprisingly showed the
most impressive gains by adding 172 sq km of forest in two years.
Orissa also added 100 sq km.

But officials clarified that the methodology followed in reporting the
forest cover was unable to discern between natural forests and
plantations. This required more expensive and higher resolution
satellite imagery.

Experts have for years contended that the increase in forest cover as
a stand alone parameter is not a good measure of the health of forests
as increase in commercial plantations does not add as much value to
biodiversity in the country.

Ref.: Times of India Bangalore Edition, dated 1.12.2009