Losing forest for trees

GS-III: Environment | Forests | Climate Change | Biodiversity | Environmental Governance

Context

• CAG Performance Audit: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found that the Green India Mission (GIM) achieved very little of its intended objectives over a decade.
• Forest quality: Against the target of improving forest quality over 1.4 million hectares, only 0.11 million hectares was achieved.
• Forest cover: The mission achieved only around 4% of its target for expanding forest cover.
• Core concern: India appears to be planting more but foresting less.

Green India Mission

• NATIONAL ACTION PLAN: GIM was one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) launched in 2008.
• Climate commitment: It was an important instrument for achieving India’s Paris Agreement commitment of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes by 2030.
• Ecological objective: The mission focused on biodiversity, water conservation, carbon sequestration and habitat restoration.
• Core idea: Forest restoration was conceived as an ecological process, rather than merely a tree-planting exercise.

Failure of Convergence

• CAMPA: The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority channels funds collected from industries diverting forest land towards afforestation.
• MGNREGA/VB-G RAM G: Rural wage employment funds can support plantation and land-restoration activities.
• Intended convergence: GIM was expected to converge with these programmes.
• Implementation gap: Such convergence never materialised effectively, limiting the mission’s impact.

Plantation Is Not Forest Restoration

• Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam: Launched in 2024 as a large-scale tree plantation drive.
• Saplings: The government reports planting 140 crore saplings so far.
• Forest data: India State of Forest Report (2023) recorded a 1,445 sq km increase in green cover.
• Quality concern: Only 156 sq km of this increase was true forest, while 1,289 sq km was tree cover outside recorded forests.
• Canopy decline: Within recorded forests, dense canopy is thinning into scrub.
• Core distinction: A tree is not a forest; plantation numbers cannot substitute for ecological restoration.

The Aravalli Example

• Degradation: The Aravallis have suffered from mining, encroachment and degradation of native vegetation.
• Invasive species: Native growth has been affected by invasive vilayati kikar (Prosopis juliflora).
• Green Wall: Fresh plantations are proposed as part of efforts to restore the Aravallis.
• Ecological limitation: New plantations cannot by themselves reverse years of mining, stop encroachment or recreate an ecosystem that evolved over millennia.
• Key principle: Restoration is not landscaping.

Why the Audit Matters

• CAG limitation: The CAG primarily measures hectares, expenditure and implementation against stated targets.
• Ecological complexity: Such measurements cannot fully capture the ecological value of a living forest or all practical implementation challenges.
• Audit verdict: Despite these limitations, the findings highlight serious gaps between policy objectives and outcomes.
• Governance concern: The original forest-restoration mission appears to have weakened while attention has shifted towards counting planted trees.

Way Forward

• Ecological restoration: Shift from counting saplings to measuring survival, native biodiversity, canopy density and ecosystem recovery.
• Convergence: Effectively integrate GIM with CAMPA and rural employment programmes.
• Native species: Prioritise native and ecologically suitable species over plantation numbers.
• Landscape approach: Address mining, encroachment, invasive species and habitat fragmentation alongside plantation.
• Outcome-based monitoring: Evaluate restoration through long-term ecological indicators rather than short-term plantation targets.
• Institutional focus: Revive the original objectives of GIM instead of allowing forest restoration to become synonymous with tree planting.

Conclusion

The CAG audit exposes a critical distinction between planting trees and restoring forests. India’s climate and ecological commitments require living, biodiverse and resilient forests, not merely higher plantation numbers. Therefore, the focus must shift from “how many trees were planted” to “how much ecosystem was restored.” India needs to restore the mission’s ecological purpose rather than simply count its trees.

UPSC Mains Practice Question

Q. “India is planting more but foresting less.” Discuss in the context of the Green India Mission, highlighting the limitations of plantation-based approaches to forest restoration.