According to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Amended Green India Mission (GIM), the mangroves and the Indian Himalayan region as well as the Arwalis and Western Ghat Mountains Range will focus on the restoration of weak landscapes.
Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav released a revised document for a period of 2021-2030 in Jodhpur on Tuesday, in a program, which marks World Day to deal with desert and drought.
The revised document states that a ‘micro-ocosist’ approach would be adopted to interfere with weak scenarios such as Arwalis, Western Ghats, Northwest India, Mangroves and Indian Himalayan region.
The National Mission for Green India was launched by the UPA government in February 2014 and is one of the eight main missions under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). The main objective of GIM is to protect, restore and increase India’s forest and tree cover using a mixture of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. One of the main objectives of the mission was to increase the forest and tree cover on 5 million hectares of forest and non-forest land and improve the quality of forest cover on 5 million hectares.
The amended mission document also estimated the Forest Survey of India (FSI) estimates that India could achieve a carbon sink of 3.39 billion tonnes by combining all restoration activities. This will require an increase in forest and tree cover in an estimated 24.7 million hectares.
As part of its commitments under the national level contribution, the National Mission for Green India aims to manufacture carbon sinks in addition to 2.5 to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide through additional forest and tree cover. It is planned at other places through the restoration of open forests, tree plantation on barren land and gardens with railway lines and national highways.
According to FSI estimates, the greatest ability to create additional carbon sinks lies in the restoration of forests, which has deteriorated with the restoration of open forests, agroporeshesties in the last 15 to 20 years.
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According to the forest report of the state state 2023, between 2021 and 2023, the net forest cover of India increased only 156.41 sq km. The report said that the country recorded loss of old development forests, mangrove covers and saw a decline in forest cover in the Western Ghats.
Weak landscapes like Western Ghats, documents said, will be restored through regional landscapes for overall landscape management, including planting of native tree species with high carbon sequence capacity. There will also be soil and moisture conservation activities to achieve land erosion neutrality.
The Western Ghats eco-system, the document said, have been degraded due to broad deforestation, fall of trees and illegal mining of minerals. This caused widespread pollution, deteriorating in air and water quality, lack of groundwater and an increase in human-welfare struggle.
The interventions of the mission were launched in the year 2015-16 and as per the revised documents, about 11.22 million hectares of area by 2020–21 can be included under planting.
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