New Delhi, February 16
India needs to focus on its missing forests, noted environmentalist Sunita Narain on Wednesday.
Her comments come days after the central government released its report on India State of Forest Report 2021. The report highlighted an increase in India’s forest cover, but Narain, the director-general of the Centre for Science and Environment, says this isn’t something to boast about “even note-worthy”.
“The ‘missing’ forest is the real issue that we need to focus on. Otherwise, our forests will be only ‘paper forests’—forests only on paper and not real,” Narain said in her analysis published in the CSE’s in-house magazine Down to Earth.
The recently released survey report has a glaring omission, she says—some 25.87 million hectares of forests—roughly the size of Uttar Pradesh—are missing.
“There is no record of whether they exist, or in what condition they are. Between 2019 and 2021, India’s forest cover has grown by a mere 0.2 per cent. Most of this ‘growth’ has been in ‘open forests’, on lands outside recorded forest areas.”
The recorded forest area, according to the Indian State of Forest Report 2021, is 77.53 million ha (hectare), she says. But forest cover on these lands is said to be 51.66 million ha.
“This means as much as 34 per cent of the area classified as forests—25.87 million ha—is missing in the assessment. The India State of Forest Report 2021 does not explain what is happening to this huge tract of forest land,” she says.
India can be said to have two kinds of forests—those that are inside the officially recorded forest area, and those that are outside it.
“The 2013 report estimated India’s total forest cover as 70 million ha – but it did not distinguish if this forest was inside or outside the recorded forest area. From the 2015 report, the area inside the forest got reduced to 51 million ha and the rest—19-20 million ha—was said to be forest cover outside recorded forest area,” the analysis says. “In fact, between the assessment 2019 and 2021, India’s forest cover has grown by a mere 0.2 per cent, and most of this ‘growth’ has been in ‘open forests’ (with canopy cover of 10-40 per cent), on lands outside recorded forest areas.”
There are states where over 30-50 percent of the land classified as forests is ‘missing’ from the government’s assessment, Narain says in her assessment.
Madhya Pradesh, for instance, has ‘lost’ nearly three million hectares.
“This is the real story of forest loss in our country – and it should worry us enormously,” her analysis says.
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