The cases for open verifiable forest cover data

The cases for open verifiable forest cover data

Subject : Environment

Section : Biodiversity

Context: The Indian Express accessed and cross-checked a part of the geo-referenced forest covers data which the government, since the 1980s, has refused to share with the media.

More on the News:

• Lutyens’ Delhi is India’s Capital, the seat of power and home to men and women who run the country, is well known. But what’s not so well known is that the bungalows of ministers and senior officers, even the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) building on Sansad Marg, are “forest” in the official forest cover map.
• Parts of the campuses of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and residential neighbourhoods across Delhi are also “forest”, an investigation by The Indian Express has found.
• A ground verification of parts of the FSI’s latest (SFR 2021) forest cover data offered a glimpse, for the first time, of all that can be labelled forest under the official interpretation of satellite images: private plantations on encroached and cleared reserve forest land, tea gardens, betel nut clusters, village homesteads, roadside trees, urban housing areas, VIP residences, parts of educational and medical institutes etc.
• Since 19.53% in the early 1980s, India’s forest cover has increased to 21.71% in 2021. Adding to this a notional 2.91% tree cover estimated in 2021, the country’s total green cover now stands at 24.62%.

Definition of Forest:

• At present, in India, there is no clear nationally-accepted definition of ‘forest’.
• States are responsible for determining their definition of forests.
• The prerogative of the states to define forests stems from a 1996 Supreme Court order called the N. GodavarmanThirumulkpad vs the Union of India judgment.
  • SC had opined that all-encompassing definition of forest wasn’t possible for India because the country has 16 different kinds of forest and a tract of grassland in one State might qualify in one region as forest but not in another.
  • In the judgement, the Supreme Court interpreted that the word “forest” must be understood according to its “dictionary meaning”.
  • This description covers all statutorily recognised forests, whether designated as reserved, protected or otherwise.
• Types of forest
  • Reserved Forests: Reserve forests are the most restricted forests and are constituted by the State Government on any forest land or wasteland which is the property of the Government. In reserved forests, local people are prohibited, unless specifically allowed by a Forest Officer in the course of the settlement.
  • Protected Forests: The State Government is empowered to constitute any land other than reserved forests as protected forests over which the Government has proprietary rights and the power to issue rules regarding the use of such forests. This power has been used to establish State control over trees, whose timber, fruit or other non-wood products have revenue-raising potential.
  • Village forest: Village forests are the one in which the State Government may assign to ‘any village community the rights of Government to or over any land which has been constituted a reserved forest’.
• Degree of protection: Reserved forests > Protected forests > Village forests

India State of Forest Report

• It is an assessment of India’s forest and tree cover, published every two years by the Forest Survey of India under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change.
• The first survey was published in 1987, and ISFR 2021 is the 17th.
• India is one of the few countries in the world that brings out such every two years, and this is widely considered comprehensive and robust.
• With data computed through wall-to-wall mapping of India’s forest cover through remote sensing techniques, the ISFR is used in planning and formulation of policies in forest management as well as forestry and agroforestry sectors.
• Forest Cover is defined as “An area more than 1 ha in extent and having tree canopy density of 10 percent and above”.
• Tree Cover is defined as “Tree patches outside recorded forest areas exclusive of forest cover and less than the minimum mappable area of one hectare”.
• Three categories of forests are surveyed
  • Very Dense Forests (canopy density over 70%),
  • Moderately Dense Forests (40-70%) and Open Forests (10-40%),
  • Scrubs (canopy density less than 10%)

Issues with Forest report data:

• Green cover data in India disregards the UN benchmark that does not include areas predominantly under agricultural and urban land use in forests.
• In India, land recorded as forest in revenue records or proclaimed as forest under a forest law is described as a Recorded Forest Area.
• The inclusion of commercial plantations, orchards, village homesteads, urban housings, etc., as dense forests.
• The steady replacement of natural forests with plantations is worrisome, as natural forests support a lot more biodiversity and stock a lot more carbon.
• The outcome of the refinement of satellite images was that the forest cover fell within the forest area while it increased outside.
• Lack of manpower limits the FSI’s scope for verifying the quality of remotely sensed data in the field.
• The FSI nevermade its data freely available for public scrutiny and bars the media from accessing its geo-referenced maps.
• Investigation into the compensatory afforestation programme shows that the locations provided for growing plantations usually have very low prospect of any meaningful forests growing.

Why steady replacement of natural forests with plantations is worrisome?

• First, natural forests have evolved naturally to be diverse and, therefore, support a lot more biodiversity.
• Secondly, plantation forests have trees of the same age, are more susceptible to fire, pests and epidemics, and often act as a barrier to natural forest regeneration.
• Thirdly, natural forests are old and therefore stock a lot more carbon in their body and in the soil.
• In 2018, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) flagged India’s assumption that new forests (plantations) reach the carbon stock level of existing forests in just eight years.
• On the other hand, plantations can grow a lot more and faster than old natural forest This also means that plantations can achieve additional carbon targets faster. But compared to natural forests, plantations are often harvested more readily, defeating carbon goals in the long term.