Context:California’s wildfires remind us that climate change is real and the quest to increase our green cover needs a fresh impetus
Wildfires
Recent California Wildfire
Coverage: It spread over three western states of the US
Deadly combination of high intensity, scale, speed and duration,
Fire triangle:
This includes fuel, oxygen and heat which are crucial for the creation of a wildfire
Fire triangle abetted by strong winds, a small spark caused by human error or lightning is deadly.
Effects of wildfires:
Impact on life and property,
Long-term effects on the quality of rivers and lakes
Biodiversity loss
Releases carbon dioxide into the air
Deforestation
Benefits
Regulating water flows
Sequestering carbon and nurturing biodiversity
Vulnerability of Forests
Rain forest: In 2019, the world lost a football field of rainforest every six seconds.
Tree cover:
Lost nearly 11.9 million hectares (one hectare is 0.01 sq km) of tree cover in 2019
3.8 million of it from mature, humid tropical primary forests
Front runners:Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia have lost the most tropical primary forest cover in recent years
Case of India:
Over the past 20 years, India has lost 328,000 hectares of humid primary forest.
forest loss in the North-East is very high
Deforestation and destruction of wetlands are among the leading causes of annual floods
Recent steps
Decrease in rate of loss: Countries like Colombia and Costa Rica have been able to slow forest loss.
Afforestation: China, the US, Ethiopia, and India have also planted billions of trees over the last decade
Billion Tree Campaign has morphed into a Trillion Tree Campaign.
Way Forward
Provide Alternatives:compensate marginalized populations on the periphery of forests and incentivize them not to flatten forests.
Payment for ecosystem services (PES) :
This method shall be replicated which was pioneered in Costa Rica, and has been successfully used in Mexico.
US Conservation Reserve Program - pays out about $1.8 billion a year under nearly 800,000 contracts with farmers to refrain from cultivating environmentally sensitive land.
China’s Grain-for-Green scheme -hands out nearly $4 billion a year to retire sloping plots (greater than 25 degrees) that are prone to soil erosion
Give up fossil fuels, reduce material consumption.
India: set up an ambitious goal of first retaining and then increasing its forest cover.
Conclusion
Wildfires in California serve as a timely reminder that climate change is here and is not some hypothesis.