Towards Inclusive and Sustainable Forest Governance
India’s forest restoration strategy must evolve from mere afforestation to inclusive, ecologically sound, and financially sustainable models to meet climate goals.
- Forests are central to India’s climate strategy, especially under the revised Green India Mission (GIM), which aims to restore 25 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
- This aligns with India’s climate pledge to create an additional carbon sink of 3.39 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.
Key Challenges in Afforestation
- Declining Forest Efficiency:
- A 2025 IIT study shows a 12% drop in photosynthetic efficiency due to rising temperatures and soil dryness, questioning the assumption that more trees always mean more carbon absorption.
- Three Persistent Gaps:
- Community Participation: Despite the Forest Rights Act (2006), many plantation drives ignore tribal and local communities.
- Ecological Design: Over-reliance on monocultures (e.g., eucalyptus) harms biodiversity and groundwater.
- Financing: Underutilization of funds like CAMPA, which holds ₹95,000 crore, limits impact.
Promising Interventions
- Ecological Restoration:
- Shift toward native, site-specific species.
- Focus on biodiversity-rich zones: Aravalli Hills, Western Ghats, mangroves, Himalayan catchments.
- Community-Led Models:
- Odisha: Joint Forest Management Committees involved in planning and revenue sharing.
- Chhattisgarh: Mahua plantations revive tribal livelihoods.
- Innovative Financing:
- Himachal Pradesh: Biochar for carbon credits and fire risk reduction.
- Uttar Pradesh: 39 crore saplings planted; exploring carbon market linkages.
Institutional and Policy Support
- Integration with:
- National Agroforestry Policy
- Watershed programmes
- CAMPA
- Training institutes in Uttarakhand, Coimbatore, Byrnihat can build ecological capacity.
Way Forward
- Empower communities as custodians of forests.
- Enhance transparency via public dashboards tracking survival rates, species mix, fund use.
- Broaden CAMPA’s scope to include participatory planning and adaptive management.
- Leverage civil society and research institutions for technical and monitoring support.
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