Growing a Forest

India appears to be planting trees at a remarkable pace, yet its forests continue to shrink in quality. This is the uncomfortable contradiction exposed by the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) performance audit of the Green India Mission (GIM), a decade-old programme conceived to restore degraded forests, improve biodiversity and create carbon sinks.

The numbers are sobering. Against a target of improving forest quality across 1.4 million hectares, GIM managed barely 0.11 million hectares. Its achievement in expanding forest cover was just four per cent. Worse, the convergence envisaged with schemes such as CAMPA and MGNREGA failed to materialise meaningfully.

The India State of Forest Report 2023 presents an equally revealing picture. Of the 1,445 sq km increase in India’s green cover, only 156 sq km constituted actual forest. The remaining 1,289 sq km was tree cover outside recorded forests. Within existing forests, dense canopy is also thinning into open forest and scrub. In other words, India is planting more trees, but not necessarily growing more forests.

This distinction is particularly significant for the Himalayas, where forests are not merely clusters of trees. They regulate water systems, prevent soil erosion, stabilise fragile slopes, protect biodiversity and act as crucial carbon sinks. Across the Himalayan belt, shrinking forest cover, fragmentation, fires, road construction, hydropower projects, tourism pressure and climate change are putting this delicate ecological balance under increasing stress.

Sikkim, therefore, deserves recognition for taking forest conservation more seriously than the tree-counting approach. With its long-standing emphasis on protecting forests, restricting plastic and environmentally damaging activities, expanding protected areas and promoting community participation in conservation, the state has demonstrated that Himalayan development cannot be separated from ecological security. Its efforts may not be perfect, but they are certainly commendable and offer lessons for other Himalayan states.

A sapling is not a forest. A plantation cannot recreate an ecosystem that evolved over centuries. Nor can a wall of freshly planted trees undo years of mining, encroachment or habitat destruction.

The CAG can count hectares and expenditure, but forests cannot be reduced to numbers. The real test is whether native forests survive, regenerate and continue to support the communities and ecosystems that depend on them.