Story so far: The State of Forest Report (SFR) 2023 was launched by Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on December 21, 2024 at the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. Coverage, carbon emissions stocks, forest fires and other parameters related to the country’s green coverage.
What did SFR 2023 discover?
According to SFR 2023, 25.17% of India is covered by forests and trees. Among them, the forest coverage rate is 21.76% and the tree coverage rate is 3.41%. These figures are a slight increase from the 21.71% and 2.91% reported in SFR 2021, respectively.
The National Forest Policy, 1988, which is responsible for India’s green cover, requires that 33% of the country’s geographical area be covered by trees or forests.
Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha top the list of states with increased forest and tree cover, while Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Ladakh (UT) and Nagaland The four states with the largest declines.
What is green cover?
Forest cover in India is defined as an area of one hectare or more “with a canopy area exceeding or equal to 10 percent, regardless of ownership and legal status,” the report said.
Likewise, tree cover refers to all tree patches that exist outside forest areas and are “less than one hectare” in size, including all scattered trees found in rural and urban settings, and [are] Not included in forest cover assessment”.
SFR uses satellite data and details from national forest inventories, as well as ground truth, to validate information. Forest cover estimates are derived from satellite data as well as growth and carbon stock estimates from inventories. The 2023 report uses satellite data from October to December 2021 and NFI data from 2017 to 2022.
How are sensitive areas performing?
In 2014, for the first time, the national government notified the Western Ghats Ecologically Sensitive Area (WGESA) on the west coast of the country for special protection under the Environment Protection Act 1986. According to SFR 2023, the region has lost 58.22 square kilometers of forest in the past decade. While “very dense” forest cover increased, “moderately dense” and “open” forest cover declined.
“Very dense” forests have a canopy density of at least 70%, “moderately dense” forests have a canopy density of 40-70%, and “open” forests have a canopy density of 10-40%.
The Nilgiris forests are part of the WGESA and UNESCO Biosphere. Between 2013 and 2023, the forest cover area decreased by 123.44 square kilometers. The Nilgiris region also reported a four-fold increase in the number of forest fires from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024.
Mangroves – tropical trees found in intertidal zones along coastal areas – are also disappearing. The report estimates that 0.15% of India’s total geographical area is covered by mangroves, a decrease of 7.43 square kilometers from 2021 alone. State shares of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra increased, but Kutch district of Gujarat reported a significant decline.
These trees stabilize shorelines, mitigate erosion, promote biodiversity, protect coastal communities from rising sea levels, and mitigate the effects of hurricanes.
The Northeastern region covers less than 8% of India’s total land area but has more than 21% of tree and forest cover. According to SFR 2023, the area of trees and forest cover in the region has decreased by 327.3 square kilometers. Media reports suggest that at least part of the decline is due to the conversion of forests to agricultural use.
What is the scope of application of SFR?
While the definition of green coverage is simple, what is included or excluded raises concerns. For example, as trees emerge as a “solution” to mitigating climate change due to their ability to sequester carbon, many legislators and researchers are turning to tree planting as a package solution.
Over time, some important questions arose about this idea. On the one hand, not all ecosystems are suitable for trees, and destroying ecosystems through tree planting can have effects that negate the original purpose of the activity. On the other hand, only native and mature species in the right environment can sequester carbon effectively. Young trees or those that are not suited to their surroundings will either not help much or not at all.
A direct analogy in the SFR is that the definition of forest includes “orchards, bamboo and palm trees”. Divya Gupta, assistant professor of environmental studies and sustainable communities at the State University of New York, called the report’s important finding a “statistic worth celebrating.”
“By including plantations, orchards, palm trees and non-native ecosystems, it erases the distinction between natural forests and monocultures,” she added. “This aggregation misrepresents forest health, masks deforestation and degradation, and distorts what we should really be prioritizing.”
“The actual increase in forest cover appears to be very small compared to the 1,445 sq km of increase in forest and green cover claimed in the document,” said Sudeep Budhaditya Deb, Deputy Conservator of Forests, Office of the Additional Chief Chief (North Bengal). ) said.
How does India track forest fires?
SFR 2023 said that during the 2023-2024 fire season, the Forest Survey of India sent more than 11.267 million SMS alerts to users. This warning system uses meteorological data from the Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.
“India’s forest fire warning system is a commendable mechanism developed by the Remote Sensing Directorate of India,” Deb said. (The Directorate of Remote Sensing of India is now part of the National Center for Remote Sensing.)
Among the alerts provided by the survey, the near-instant alerts are based on recordings from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Sensors on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA’s Suomi-NPP satellite. data.
Data from the Aqua and Suomi-NPP satellites have recently sparked a controversy in India. as hinduism Government officials have reportedly instructed rice farmers across the National Capital Region to postpone stubble burning activities until later in the day, once Aqua and Suomi-NPP complete the flyovers, so official records may overstate the effectiveness of states’ phased efforts to extinguish burning.
According to SFR 2023, VIIRS detected 203,000 fire hotspots, down from 223,000 in the 2021-2022 season and 212,000 in 2022-2023.
However, SFR does not distinguish between “good fires” that rejuvenate forests and fires that degrade forests.
Is SFR relevant to climate action?
The exercise of understanding how much carbon can be sequestered uses the term “carbon stocks” to refer to all the carbon in an ecosystem, both biomass and non-biomass. For example, in mature forests, as trees grow above and below ground, carbon accumulates in the trees, in the leaf litter around them, in dead wood, etc.
In 2022, India pledged to increase its carbon stocks by 2.5-3 billion tons “by 2030 through increasing forest and tree cover.” The current inventory of this variety is about 30.4 billion tons.
According to SFR 2023, India’s carbon stocks increased by 81.5 million tonnes between 2021 and 2023, and growing stock (the sum of all trees growing in a forest (in terms of number or volume)) increased by 4.25%.
But experts say the report makes no mention of forest quality leading to increased forest cover, nor does it provide data on the actual causes of forest degradation.
“Key ecological indicators such as forest fragmentation and biodiversity health are missing, making it impossible to assess the true significance of the reported statistics,” Gupta said. “In addition, the report lacks the ability to track ecosystem losses from land use change and deforestation. mechanism.”
Published – January 3, 2025 05:00 AM (US Standard Time)