Transparency in afforestation drives

Afforestation drive is important to increase forest cover and considered to be one of the key strategies to address the problems of carbon emissions and climate change. In India, the afforestation drives and awareness around it are well publicized. However, lack of transparency on monitoring the survivability of the plants leaves room for speculation over the actual outcome of the awareness drives and utilization of funds for such drives. The parliamentary standing committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change in its recent report flagged the issue of lack of transparency in utilization of funds allocated under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) for afforestation in different states. The Committee expressed concern that the mortality rate of the plants planted during such drives was quite high and there was no mechanism available to keep track of the survival, or otherwise, of these plants. The Committee also expressed concern that although a huge amount of money was being spent on such exercises, yet there was no mechanism to check either the credibility of the claims made by forest officers for having planted a given number of plants at a site and the number of plants which had survived after a certain period of time, the report adds. In its earlier report the Committee had raised the issue of plantation of a large number of plants and, also expressed apprehension of money being siphoned off in such cases. The Committee recommended that the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change should allay the concerns on this front in a transparent manner through audits the plantation activities that can be accessed easily by both public representatives and civil society. The Ministry is yet to submit its Action Taken Report as recommended by the committee on CAMPA fund utilization. It is mandatory under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 that whenever forest cover is cleared and land under the cover is diverted for non-forest purposes such construction of roads, setting up infrastructure projects, afforestation is to be carried out on equivalent non-forest area. The Ministry created the CAMPA in 2004 to overlook utilization of Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) that was created at the directive of the Supreme Court. Afforestation drive got a boost in 2019 when the Central government released CAMPA funds to the tune of Rs 47,436 crore to the states. India's Nationally Determined Contribution target under Paris Agreement 2015 is to generate an additional carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon-di-oxide equivalent by 2030. This will require the country to add 25-30 million hectares of additional forest cover by 2030. According to "India State of Forest Report, 2019", the total forest cover of the country is 7,12,249 sq km which is 21.67% of the geographical area and total tree cover of the country is estimated as 95,027 sq km which is 2.89% of the geographical area. The total carbon stock in forest is estimated as 7,124.6 million tonnes. There is an increase of 42.6 million tonnes in the carbon stock of the country as compared to the last assessment of 2017. The annual increase is 21.3 million tonnes, which is 78.1 million tonnes CO2 equivalent. In 2019, the Central government modified the CAMPA guidelines and notified that the States, Union Territories with more than 75% of forest cover of their respective geographical areas shall not be required to provide non-forest land in lieu of diversion of forest land for projects within the UT/State itself. This modification has ramifications for five Northeastern states- Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram which have more than 75 per cent forest cover. It allows the companies to undertake the compensatory afforestation in other states outside the project state. There is no clarity on monitoring of compensatory afforestation outside the project state which leaves room for questioning the effectiveness of shifting out the afforestation drive. In Arunachal Pradesh with 79.63 per cent forest cover, for instance, the Dibang Valley multipurpose project will require felling of 3.21 lakh trees to facilitate installation of the country's largest hydropower project of 2880-megawatts capacity. This has been done to expedite approval to mega projects which remains stuck up for nonavailability of land for compensatory afforestation. There can be irreversible consequences of such modification in afforestation rules in the name of ease of doing business and lead to rampant clearing of forest to push hydropower and mining projects in these Northeastern states. Lack of transparency in CAMPA fund utilization adds to apprehension over monitoring of compensatory afforestation outside the project state. Wide ranging consultations with environment experts, climate scientists, forest ecologists will throw more light on long-term implications of such relaxation in compensatory afforestation norms in the name pushing development projects. There is no other alternative to strengthening the monitoring mechanism and timely evaluation of all afforestation drives.