FOREST COVER ASSESSMENT 2022

VK Bahuguna

The state of country’s forest and tree cover is biannually monitored by the Forest Survey of India (FSI). The latest State of Forest Report (SFR) 2021 was released last week in Delhi by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. It is the only official document which gives the status of country’s forest and tree cover. India is one of the very few countries that monitor its forest and tree cover continuously and bring out the status periodically in public domain after every two year. The assessment is done through satellite imaginaries and corroborated by field inventory.

The first assessment report was published by FSI in 1987 after the satellite imaginaries were compared with satellite imageries of National Remote Sensing Agency Hyderabad. Based on the field inventories and forest cover mapping, the SFR 2021 gives a figure of 80.95 million ha for the forest and tree cover of the country. This constitutes 24.62 percent of the geographical area of the country. The forest cover of the country is 71.37 million ha and the tree cover is 9.57 million ha. Thus there has been an increase of 1540 sq km of forest cover and 721 sq km of tree cover in the country compared to 2019 assessment. The forest and tree cover as per the report is inching towards one fourth of the land mass.

There has also been a marginal increase of 17 sq km in the ecologically important mangrove forests which protect the sea shore population from storms and hurricanes. The growing stock of the forests has also been increasing compared to last assessment by 251.74 million cum and stand at 6167.50 million cubic cum.  The poor man’s timber Bamboo has also recorded an increase of 124 million tonnes over the last assessment and stood at 13,882 million tonnes.

The report also gives a positive indication with reference to achieving Paris climate change treaty on Climate Change as the carbon stock has also increased by 79.4 million tonnes and as per the present assessment is estimated to be at 7204 million tonnes.

For the past many years in each assessment the FSI has been adding some new features like Joint Forests Management status, Bamboo stock etc and in this year’s report it has added the changes witnessed in project Tiger/protective/ Gir Lion areas for past decade. The Tiger population has been steadily increasing in the project Tiger as well as outside and the management need to be fine tuned with reference to carrying capacity of the forests and stability of ecosystem in terms of pry and predator ration. In 52 Tiger reserves we have 7.39 million ha of area notified with a forest cover over 5.56 million ha.

Yet another new feature in the present report has been the assessment of climatic hotspot mapping over the forest cover for the year 2030, 2050 and 2085 for temperature and rainfall changes. Uttarakhand, Jammu- Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh are in this list along with North eastern states and south India, Ladakh and Andaman. The climate change and rising heat waves are destroying the forest regeneration over 35 percent of the forest area and the state forest departments and the centre have failed in preventing forest fires from occurring. The natural causes are beyond control of anybody but most of the forest fires are manmade and the mandarins in the Environment Ministry need to think seriously over this.

Like any other government report this assessment has also attracted criticism from some quarters. Some so called experts have criticized the report for including tea gardens, rubber and coconut plantations under the tree cover. Some others have criticized it on the ground of lack of information on bio-diversity. This criticism is lopsided and motivated. The FSI mandate is to monitor the forest and tree cover and to this extant it has done a thoroughly a professional job. For other things like bio-diversity and vegetation assessment need research work as well as an entire set of man power which present set up of FSI is not capable. The trees wherever they are of whichever species, must be counted to ascertain the carbon sequestration and in terms of our international commitment on climate change. Further, all these tree canopies have their own ecological value for the country after all monoculture cannot be totally condemned. Large bird diversity lives in these trees and helps our agriculture fields. The scrub forest as well as forest with 10 percent or less than forest cover has their own ecological value.  A country of 130 crore cannot create a biodiversity hot spot everywhere. The information generation by FSI is a great tool to reassess the management priorities and the government should infuse more man powers in institutions with adequate funds to find out the ecological sustainability of the forest cover.

However, all those who have criticized it have failed to notice why the report has not assessed the forest cover over the large chunk of 47 lakh ha of land vested under the Forest Right Act 2006. The Supreme Court had directed the FSI to find out the status of the correct implementation of this Act and hence to find out encroachments of the forest land. There are few points which the Director-General of Forests and the Director General of FSI and other institutions must advice the government on two account. First, the overall assessment of impact of Forest Right Act on the livelihood of the people and the current status of these forests and also to fix a time limit for applying for the rights (if a cut off date cannot be fixed) which has been left opened ended even after 15 years of the Act’s enactment. Second, periodical assessment of biodiversity in natural forests and in every report in future the regeneration status in dominant forest types must be spelt out. Third must control forest fires and limit the yearly exposure to forest fires to less than 10 percent. Hope Mr Bhupender Yadav Environment and Forest Minister will ponder over the reports and act to improve management

(Writer is Chairman Centre for Resource Management and Environment)

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