Deforestation in India

Deforestation in India 1
DEFORESTATION IN INDIA
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Deforestation in India 2
Introduction
Just like many of the world’s less developed nations, India is experiencing increasing
deterioration of its natural environment. Agricultural modernisation, rapid industrialisation, and
burgeoning populace are combining in numerous less developed countries, including India, to
hurt the natural environment so severely that its continued carrying capacity is in jeopardy.
During the last two decades, the Indian regime has pledged to protect its surrounding and avert
the depletion of its natural resource base. In spite of apparent regimen resolve to address India’s
ecological concerns, merely modest progress has been achieved. Concerns such as water and air
pollution, soil erosion and waterlogging, salinisation and deforestation continue at a fast rate. Of
the above concerns, deforestation has plagued India since the days before its independence. A
greater deal of Indian deforestation is the legacy of colonialism. Forest loss had reached a critical
point by the period India gained independence in 1947. Deforestation, nevertheless, continues at
an ever-growing rate, and thus figures as essential aspects in India’s present and future. This
essay will discuss to what extent can global growth can be reconciled with sustainability.
Additionally, the paper will debate different strategies for attaining a range of sustainable
development goals in the case of deforestation in India.
Deforestation is a menace to the contemporary world which generates concerns to the millions of
social scientists and environmentalists in India as well as throughout the sphere. Deforestation
means decreases in the numbers of trees due to the various anthropogenic and natural aspects
which build severe impacts on the environmental and human society as well. Forest is well
recognised as globe’s lungs. They absorb carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas.
Deforestations slow down the absorption speed, speeding up the pace of global warming.
Enormous deforestation continues, the forest zone of the sphere is reducing, which is very

Deforestation in India 3
troublesome from an ecological viewpoint. Widespread cutting down of trees has upsurge to
unstable weather phase, which has also affected human existence. The newest report from the
global forest resource assessment (GFRA) suggest that in 1990 and 2015, the entire forest zone
has reduced by 3% and the zone of more than 102,000lakh acres has minimised to 98,810 lakh
acres1. Due to the fast deforestation occurring on the Himalayas, land destruction is growing
quickly. According to study, the erosion rate in the Himalayan area has reached up to 7 mm per
annum. With regard to World Bank approximations, the forest offers occupation for nearly two-
thirds of all the earth classes, and gathering to tropical rainforest can hurt the biodiversity of
around 100 types daily2. Since India implemented the growth model of 8 and 9%, a human
invention has improved in nature. As soon as Uttarakhand was created, the action of excavating,
bidding and spoiling the rivers arose3. According to the forest position report-2011 given by the
1 Tian, Hanqin, Kamaljit Banger, Tao Bo, and Vinay K. Dadhwal. "History of land use in
India during 1880–2010: Large-scale land transformations reconstructed from satellite
data and historical archives." Global and Planetary Change 121 (2014): 78-88. [Online].
Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818114001283; ,
[Accessed on 6 January 2019].
2 Paul, Supantha, Subimal Ghosh, Robert Oglesby, Amey Pathak, Anita Chandrasekharan,
and R. A. A. J. Ramsankaran. "Weakening of Indian summer monsoon rainfall due to
changes in land use land cover." Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 32177. [Online]. Retrieved
from: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep32177, [Accessed on 6 January 2019].
3 Ahmad, Firoz, and Laxmi Goparaju. "Long term deforestation assessment in Jharkhand
state, India: A grid based geospatial approach." In Biological Forum, vol. 9, no. 1, pp.
183-188. 2017. [Online]. Retrieved from:

Deforestation in India 4
ministry of environment and forests, the tree and forest parts are spread over 78.29 million
hectares in the nation, which is 23.81% of the nation's geographical part, whereas wood ought to
be 33% of any state4.
India has been trying to realize its target of keeping 33% of its topographical zone under forest
cover for years, but the 2017 state of forest report depicts that it is still stressed to go beyond
22%. India has seen swift deforestation in latest years, chiefly due to its attention on economic
growth. According to the regime statistics, 14,000 sq. Km of forests was cleared to house 23,716
industrial schemes through India over the previous 30 years5. While market-friendly changes
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Firoz_Ahmad3/publication/318109980_Long_term_
deforestation_assessment_in_Jharkhand_state_India_A_grid_based_geospatial_approach
/links/595aaa89aca272f3c083f935/Long-term-deforestation-assessment-in-Jharkhand-
state-India-A-grid-based-geospatial-approach.pdf, [Accessed on 6 January 2019].
4 Reddy, C. Sudhakar, C. S. Jha, and V. K. Dadhwal. "Spatial dynamics of deforestation
and forest fragmentation (1930-2013) in Eastern Ghats, India." The International
Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences 40, no. 8
(2014): 637. [Online]. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sudhakar_Reddy_C/publication/
269407719_Spatial_dynamics_of_deforestation_and_forest_fragmentation_1930-
2013_in_Eastern_Ghats_India/links/548b1ebd0cf214269f1dd097.pdf, [Accessed on 6
January 2019].
5 Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. Ecology and equity: The use and abuse of
nature in contemporary India. Routledge, 2013. [Online]. Retrieved from:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135634889, [Accessed on 6 January 2019].

Deforestation in India 5
have prospered in drawing millions of Indians out of dearth, economists say a considerable
portion of the populace is not gaining the economic growth paybacks.
Closely to 275 million deprived persons in India, particularly tribal communities, rely on the
forest for existence and incomes. Nearly 50% of the food needs of forest inhabitants are offered
by forest. Several of the above groups suffer from inadequate access to educational and health
services and benefits little from the regime’s economics’ growth programs. Thus, abolishing
forest has overwhelming concerns for them6.
Estimate of India’s forest resources and rates of depletion are varied and many. According to the
Indian regime, 23% of India’s territory is covered by forest, and 40-50 % of that zone has good
forest cover. As with the forest department statistics in most developing nations, however, those
provided by Indian forest department at both central and state levels are frequently questionable.
According to national remote sensing agency (NRSA) statistics, forests covered merely 14.1% of
Indian Territory in 1980-1982 and closed forest cover reduced by 22.4% in the last decade.
India, being the sevenths largest nations in the areas and the second most populated nations,
possess a little amount of the forest cover. According to the national forest policy in 1953,
suggested for the importance of an overall 33% forest cover for the nations as a whole (60% in
hilly parts and 25% in plains). The above is hardly available except in Nagaland, Mizoram,
Andaman’s, Manipur, Pradesh and Arunachal (in hills) and Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa
(in plains). In India, the per capita average of forest land is merely 0.11 ha which is much lower
than the world average of 1.08 ha. The greatest deforestation has happened in Madhya Pradesh,
6 Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. Ecology and equity: The use and abuse of
nature in contemporary India. Routledge, 2013. [Online]. Retrieved from:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135634889, [Accessed on 6 January 2019].

Deforestation in India 6
which lost approximately two millions ha. Deforestation has been disastrous in the western
Himalayas where the forests below 2000m have almost been eradicated.
Several causes of massive deforestation in India exist. One of them is the faulty government
forest policy. The first forest policy established with the forest act of 1865 encouraged the people
living near the forest to clear them for cultivation. The above had disastrous effects over the
woods paralysing the old community management structure and promoting the individual's
commercial interests centred on loss and profit. Secondly, extensive damage to a forest is caused
by open grazing of cattle by local people. The animals not only hurt the novel saplings but make
the topsoil under their hoof compact and prevent new sprouting. In Uttaranchal alone, there are
more than 25,000 such as grazers owning a flock of over 1.2 million goats and sheep. Thirdly,
many tribes of the north-east practice Jhuming, burn the forest lands, cultivate crops and move to
other parts when the topsoil fertility is lost. The increasing pressure of populace has reduced the
time of jhum cycle from 12 to 6 years disrupting the action of forest recover. Fourthly, with the
rapid growing of populace and increasing demand for food and more areas is being reclaimed for
agriculture. About 50lakh hectares of forest land of the nation has been brought under cultivation
during the previous 25 years. Fifth, the construction routines in the form of human settlements,
means of communication and transport, reservoirs and dams and quarrying and mining have a
severe effect on the forest land. The constructions of houses in the tourist centres such have
Darjeeling, Nainital, Ooty and Mussoorie have depleted the forest cover. The Chinese invasion
of 1962 has led to massive road building activity in Himalayan region which now has over
30,000km of roads making the whole area more vulnerable landslides. The large multipurpose
projects like Tehri and Sarovar are going to submerge thousands of forest land leading to the
extinction of some of the rare species of plants. Finally, commercial acuities like oil and resin