INDIA STATE OF FOREST REPORT 2021

INDIA STATE OF FOREST REPORT 2021

TOPIC: Environment

Context- The National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, prepared a report on India’s forest cover using satellite imagery which led to India State of forest Report Since 1987

Concept-

• Some four decades ago, in the mid-1980s, the National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, prepared a report on India’s forest cover using satellite imagery.
• The report compared the forest cover between 1972-75 and 1980-82, and found that the country had lost 1.3 million hectares (ha) of forests every year in this seven-year period.
• Soon, the Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun, was tasked with producing an assessment of the country’s forest wealth every two years.
• Since 1988, when FSI produced the first State of Forest Report 1987, the capability of satellites and of interpretation of forests has improved substantially, but the same is not the case with the state of the country’s forest cover.

India State of Forest Report 2021 (ISFR 2021):

• India State of Forest Report 2021 (ISFR 2021), released January 13, 2022, shows a minimal increase of 0.16 million ha (0.2 per cent) in the forest cover between 2019 and 2021.
• ISFR 2021 shows that close to 28 per cent of the forest cover is outside the recorded forest area.
• About 12 per cent of the very dense category of forests is also outside the recorded areas.
• The report also shows that the increase in forest cover between 2019 and 2021 has happened primarily because of the growth outside the recorded area.
• In 2021, India’s total forest cover added up to 71.38 million ha, which is 22 per cent of the country’s geographical area.
• What is important to note is that this forest wealth — about 60 per cent of total forest cover and 73 per cent of the very dense forests — is concentrated in districts classified as “tribal” by ISFR 2021. These districts are listed under Schedule V of the Constitution as habitats of Scheduled Tribes.