We must renew our commitment to enhancing India’s forest cover

Livemint     15th September 2020     Save    

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.