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India’s pledge to set a net zero target by 2070, at the COP26 summit, Glasgow, has again highlighted the importance of forests as an undisputed mechanism to help mitigate the challenges of climate change.

Degradation of forests

• As per the State of Forests Report (1989), the country had 7.83% of its geographical area under the open forest category, having a density of 10% to less than 40%.
• In 30 years (2019) this has been increased to 9.26%.
• Having diverted nearly 1.5 million hectares of forests since 1980 for developmental activities and losing nearly 1.48 million hectares of forests to encroachers coupled with an intricate link between poverty and unemployment, India is witnessing enormous degradation of forests and deforestation.

Measures to increase forest cover

• Participation of people is an essential and effective route to achieve the desired target of carbon sequestration through the restoration of forests.
• The efforts to make this participatory approach operative resulted in the formation of nearly 1.18 lakh JFMCs managing over 25 million hectares of forest area.
• Most of these became active and operative while implementing various projects financed by external agencies such as the World Bank, the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF) Japan, the Department for International Development (DFID) United Kingdom and the European Union (EU).
• The similar system of joint management in the case of national parks, sanctuaries and tiger reserves which existed in the name of eco-development committees initially proved effective.
• However, the completion of the project period and lack of subsequent funding affected their functionality and also the protection of forests due to a lack of support from participating local communities including associated non-governmental organisations.

Way Forward

• India will have to ‘focus much more on climate change and devise strategies and programmes to achieve the net zero target’.
• Besides reducing the quantum of emissions in a phased manner — itself full of challenges — the approaches for carbon storage and offsetting through natural sinks such as forests need to be given equal priority.
• To achieve net zero targets there is a need to revisit our existing legal and policy mechanisms, incentivise the local communities appropriately and ensure fund flow for restoration interventions, duly providing for the adequate participation of local people in planning and implementation through local institutions.