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Sunday Reading
New Delhi, 5 May 2010
Increasing
Forestry
OFFER
SUSTAINABLE INCENTIVES
By
Dhurjati Mukherjee
The Union Environment Ministry recently
estimated that forests, which cover 25 per cent of the country’s area, could
absorb 11 per cent of India’s
greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. A ‘green bonus’ has
been announced from the next fiscal for covering forests that act as carbon
sinks.
The country’s forest cover is likely to increase
over the next 20 years and enhance the country’s capacity to absorb
earth-warming carbon dioxide by 11 per cent, according to a new study.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore estimated that the country’s forest
cover could grow from 68 million hectares to 72 million hectares by 2030 if the
current trend of afforestation is maintained.
Trees absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide through
photosynthesis and the growing forest cover will increase the forest carbon
stock from 8.8 billion tonnes of carbon in 2006 to 9.5 billion tonnes carbon by
2030, as per the study. Such projections of increased forest cover and carbon
stock are indeed welcome as this would help Indian negotiators at different international
conferences on the ways and means to curb global warming. Indeed, India could
cite its steady increase in forest cover as an achievement towards mitigating
climate change.
The IISc researchers observed that India appears
to have stabilized its forest cover despite pressures from human and livestock
population and low per capita forest cover. The country has only 66 million
hectares of forest or wooded land per 1000 population compared with China’s 215 million hectares or Brazil’s 2673
million hectares. About 196,000 villages in India are located within or on the
fringes of forests.
The stabilization of forest cover amidst reports
of deforestation may be attributed to the strict implementation of the Forest
Conservation Act 1988 that was designed to reduce indiscriminate diversion of
forest land for non-forestry activities and regulate land under forests.
However, a lot more needs to be done in protecting the forests and also taking
up urban forestry to combat the growing environmental pollution in the urban
centres.
Additionally, another recent study has found
that India’s
forest cover of 65-66 million hectares of forest and tree cover is enough to
neutralize 11.25 per cent of the country’s total emission of greenhouse gases
at 1994 levels. This is equivalent to offsetting 100 emissions from all energy
in residential and transport sectors or 40 per cent of total emissions from the
agricultural sector. Should the country’s forest cover increase at the current
rate of 0.6 per cent per annum, then the total carbon stored in its forest will
increase to 6998 million tonnes by 2015.
Efforts to reverse deforestation have meant that
between 1995 and 2003, the carbon stock in the country’s forests increased from
6245 million tonnes to 6662 million tonnes. Over the next few years-- till
2015, the government proposes to bring 6 million hectares of degraded forest
land under forest cover. Considering the impact of the initiatives undertaken,
the study has projected that if India’s
forest and tree cover increases at a higher rate than 0.6 per cent, then the
total carbon stored could increase to 7283 million tonnes by 2015. This is
expected to add a value of Rs 6000 crores per year.
Obviously, what is needed at this time is
sustainable forest management and incentives for afforestation and
reforestation. In spite of all efforts, the Tenth Plan stipulation to increase
“forest and tree cover to 25 per cent by 2007 (end of the Plan period) and 33
per cent by 2012 (end of 11th Plan) as against the baseline cover of
2003 per cent in 2001” has not been achieved. The mid-term appraisal of the
Ministry of Environment & Forests found the progress rather disappointing
as the total forest cover does not appear to have increased despite 1.1 million
hectares covered under annual afforestation programmes.
Even the 12th Finance Commission took
cognizance of the need to compensate forest-rich States. It set aside Rs 1000
crores as grants-in-aid to be given to States over five years in proportion to
the forest cover these possess.
Conserving forests and increasing the green
cover has been India’s
key priority for some time now. In colonial times and after, the State
appropriated resources from local communities. Things changed after the Forest
Act which centralized decision-making over forests with only the Central
government having the power to sanction the diversion of forest land for
non-forest purposes. The hitherto rampant diversion of land stopped but
deforestation couldn’t be adequately controlled.
In the 1990s, the Supreme Court stepped in,
imposing checks on how forests were to be worked and the country also started
giving a lot of emphasis on forest development. The action plan adopted by the
government since has been to improve the forest cover by rehabilitating 31
million forest land at an investment of around Rs 1860 crores per annum.
Sadly, the strategy has not been all that
successful because of lack to secure rights to land or even to forest produces.
Moreover, the incentives to people, tied just to forest produce, were too small
to make it sustainable. The Joint
Forest management (JFM) strategy
was that local communities would manage forests if they were compensated with
resultant forest produce; many States talked of “benefit sharing”. In reality,
either the highly degraded forests provided little by way of tangible benefits or
the 1996 ban on felling came in the way of gaining from harvesting timber. And
various rules in different States that keep changing restrict access to
non-timber forest produce.
A World Bank study: Unlocking Opportunities
for Forest-dependent People found that though the JFM model has been
successful, most communities still fail to utilize the full potential of
forests to improve local livelihood. For communities to benefit from the
untapped potential of forests, it stressed, wide ranging and carefully phased
reforms were required at both the national and State level.
The reforms should include: Stronger forest
rights and responsibilities for forest communities; more effective management
systems targeted at communities involved with forestry; improved access to more
efficient market systems for major and minor products; and more effective and
flexible institutions and capacity building.
The economic benefits from forestry have been
envisaged to be immense. The total forest income from commercial timber, bamboo
and non-timber products on improved forests is expected to rise from an
estimated $ 222 million in 2004 to approximately $ 2 billion by the year 2020.
Further, with modest value addition and quality enhancements, annual commercial
incomes could also increase significantly. Ecological and eco-tourism values
from current JFM forest could be as high as $ 1.7 billion as formerly degraded
forests mature and begin to generate important conservation benefits, the study
concluded.
Thus, it is imperative to give a serious thought
to regenerate our forests and evolve new ways and means of managing its wealth
in a way that can straddle conservation as well as productivity. These could
be: determining forests which needs to be protected only for conservation; paying
the communities who live in and around forest lands for protecting resources; revamping
the conservation policies for forests by planting trees in a big way but also
cutting those to utilize our forest wealth without destroying forests; and encouraging
through incentives and other ways afforestation and reforestation programmes,
both in urban and rural areas. Let us at least make a beginning. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News & Feature Alliance)
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