An essay on afforestation programmes in India

Photo Credit: Aarohi Dutta

Afforestation programmes of India can be understood under three heads as under –

1. National Forestry Programme

2. Compensatory Forestry Programme

3. Social Forestry Programme

The national forestry programme was launched in 1948, a year after India attained Independence, for development of reserve forest of the country. The objective was development of forest of economic use with emphasis on rare species and mountainous forests. Development of biospheric forests was one focus area of the programme.

Under the government programme, 12 national biospheres were to be developed (9 developed till 1999) to conserve the species of the plants in the Himalayas, northeast India, Mangrove vegetation area and plateau regions of India.

To develop deforested wasteland, the national forestry programme had a separate scheme. Two types of wasteland were recognised: deforested wasteland – about 92 million hectares and agricultural wasteland.

Under the wasteland technology mission, 65 million hectares of forest land were to be afforested by 2000. The mission was launched in 1988. The focus areas of this mission were in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Siwalik Himalaya region.

Forest and Environment Ministry was established to carry out afforestation programme. Under 

compensatory forestry programme, which was launched in 1980, it was made legally compulsory for agencies cutting forests to compensate the loss with afforestation in the neighbourhood on the same scale.

The Forest and Environment Ministry circulated a note to all the states asking them to submit compensatory forestry programme reports periodically.
The programme received considerable success in the initial years. The loss of forest during 1980-90 was estimated at 2.98 lakh hectares while fresh forest cover under c

Photo Credit: Aarohi Dutta

ompensatory forestry programme was reported at 3.45 lakh hectares thus recording an achievement of forest cover of about 0.47 lakh hectares in 10 years.

Under the Narmada River Valley Project, loss of about 35-40 lakh hectares of forest was estimated and it was planned to be compensated with 10 lakh trees over about 20,000 in the neighbourhood.

States like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal need compensatory forestry on large scale as these states have witnessed massive loss of forest cover due to development efforts.

Social forestry programme is afforestation at micro level. It is people’s programme of afforestation. First participation is invited from people in villages. Every settlement or village is the unit of implementation of the social forestry programme.

Social forestry programme is an anti-poverty programme and comes as part of rural development programme. It is taken to provide an alternative economy to rural population. Social forestry programme was implemented on the basis of a report of the National Commission on Agriculture in 1976.

The National Commission on Agriculture suggested developing alternative rural economy to face the disastrous impact of sudden flood, drought and other calamities in rural areas. One of the suggestions was to promote people’s participation in afforestation.

In 1981, a national workshop was organized by Department of Environment under Ministry of Agriculture at Ahmedabad to discuss the possible threat of fuel and fodder famine in the country. The idea of social forestry was recommended at the workshop. The Indira Gandhi government acted swiftly and the same year social forestry was introduced in 101 fuel deficient districts of the country.

Photo Credit: Prabhash K Dutta

The social forestry programme received recognizable support in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bihar. Hence, the programme was further extended in 1983 and a new slogan was coined: One Tree for Every Child. To meet the target, the central government decided to provide subsidized supply of saplings at the block level. However, the scheme failed disastrously in north India. It received considerable success in West Bengal and southern states of the country.

In 1983, another programme was introduced. The Operation Soil Watch Programme, which was already working in Himachal Pradesh, extended to 14 other states and 282 more districts. In 1988, it was decided to implement in all districts of the country.

Objectives of social forestry programme:

1. Fuel

2. Cow dung for rural households

3. Food reserves for dependent population

4. Industrial resources

5. Ground water table elevation

6. Fodder

7. Soil conservation

8. Employment generation

A model was prepared by UP Singh in EW Geography Journal, which explains the importance of social forestry in rural India. The model explains the multi-dimensional importance of social forestry in rural areas.







Social forestry is of three types –

1. Agro-forestry

2. Rural forestry

3. Urban forestry

Urban forestry became part of social forestry in 1983. Agro-forestry is household forestry programme. Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab and western central part of India saw considerable success of agro-forestry. The divide lines of the agricultural plots were to be used for agro-forestry.

Mainly fuel wood species were grown under agro-forestry.

Jodhpur Forestry Resource Institute developed some species of Acacia favourable for the environment of Rajasthan. These species provide two benefits to farmers

- Fuel wood to farmers of Rajasthan

- Fodder to desert animals; camel and goats eat the leaves acacia.

It is also able to provide much needed shadow to sanding crops delaying or slowing down the process of evapotranspiration. There has not been quick loss of soil moisture in areas under agro-forestry. So, farmers accepted this with greater enthusiasm in states like Rajasthan.

Rural forestry is basically a community forestry programme. Here panchayat, villages and NGOs are involved to do the job. Rural forestry is carried out on government’s land in villages and on waste lands. The government lands in hundreds of villages had become wasteland. Hence, government decided to bring forestry over such land pieces with the help of the villagers. They were encouraged to grow such trees which can provide food, fuel and fodder.

In Madhya Pradesh, some landlords were encouraged to promote rural forestry programme in their areas. Many landlords gave their lands on lease to private players who developed rural forestry there. In Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh, the villagers worked to promote rural forestry by planting trees along the roads.

Urban forestry was devised to make use of government lands in urban areas for growing trees in a systematic manner. Riverside lands, Railways’ unused lands and patches near parks were brought under forest cover. In urban areas, the NGOs were involved to promote forestry. These organizations continue to work for afforestation.

Nehru Yuva Kendra scheme, which was launched in 1972 to mark the silver jubilee of India’s Independence, has been involved with urban forestry. Nehru Yuva Kendra was launched in 43 districts but when it was made an autonomous body in 1986-87 under Rajiv Gandhi government, it was extended to 311 districts. It was renamed as Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan. At present (2017), it is working in 643 districts of the country. Along with Nehru Yuva Kendra, several universities were also involved to promote urban forestry.

Under the urban forestry programme, the municipal corporations have the responsibility to develop a green belt around the city. Under another programme of the government, the industrial units within the bounds of a city has to adopt the surrounding area for afforestation.

Thus social forestry is truly an afforestation programme where people are engaged and involved in expanding the green cover. It is done at the micro-level, so its efficiency can be very high. In true sense, social forestry is a sustainable development programme. Social forestry is also a poverty alleviation and rural development programme. For urban areas, it is the most sustainable environment programme. But, social forestry programme has failed to achieve the target.

Over the last 35-40 years, there has been policy emphasis on afforestation. Social afforestation programmes have even received some commendable success in the last 25 years or so but all these efforts have not been able to compensate the loss of forests over the same period of time.

Some recognizable success was seen in states having large wastelands like, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and a few others especially during 1980s. Response was appreciable during 1990s in West Bengal. But, other states practically failed to implement social forestry schemes effectively.

Three factors are held responsible for overall failure of social forestry schemes. There has not been proper information available with people in rural areas. Many still don’t know how they can contribute in making their environment and livelihood better by engaging with social forestry programme. Corruption and nepotism prevented dissemination of information to target group people.

Photo Credit: Prabhash K Dutta 

It was commonly found that the village or panchayat level political leaders took the benefits of the social forestry programme (as timber is very valuable) leaving out the target population. There is an urgent need to increase participation of people, who have been left behind in the promotion of this programme. There is need to organize workshops and hold training camps in rural areas to effectively communicate with the people living in villages.

Secondly, the plant species were not chose on according to the climate and weather suitability of the regions. There was no connection between the selection of crops and agro-climatic regionalization of the country. For example, coconut tree plantation was focused in Bihar and lot of resources was spent on it while the state does not have favourable climatic conditions for this.

Thirdly, there is no optimum village landuse map practically available. No landuse survey was done for decades after Independence. So, the selection of environmentally suitable species is difficult to find at policy making level. Besides, there is also a lack of politico-administrative commitment to achieve the target of social forestry.

The government took some other measures to improve green cover area of the country. These measures included, the National Forest Act, 1988. Before, this there was the Environmental Protection Act was there. Jhoom Farming Protection Act, 1976 was passed as a legislative measure to conserve forested areas.

The government also decided to conduct inflammability test of forest areas and put up fire breakers in forests. Preferences were given in giving LPG connections and supply of gas cylinders to forest areas so that tree cutting could be reduced. The recent Ujjwala Yojana of the central government has achieved great success and is expected to reduce tree felling significantly.

Forest towers were constructed to facilitate early sighting of forest fires and organized felling of trees by timber smugglers. Satellite imagining is being used to assess the forest cover of the country and specific regions periodically to keep a watch on the progress. The government has also taken steps to develop forest research centres to improve the quality of forest land and management of forests.

Photo Credit: Aarohi Dutta

The Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, Dehradun, the Institute of Arid Zone Forestry Research, Jodhpur, the Indian Institute of Forest Management, the Institute of Deciduous forest, Jabalpur, the Institute of Wood Sciences Technology, Bengaluru, the Institute of Rain and Moist Deciduous Forest, Jorhat and the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding, Coimbatore are some of the examples of the research centres developed by the government in its effort to give momentum to forestry in the country. 

Globalisation brought multi-national companies and private sector in the field of afforestation in India. The course of forestry was introduced in many universities.

In spite of these new approaches for nationwide afforestation programme, there is urgent need to bring some new scheme to make afforestation viable and effective. These may include:

1. Forestry course at all levels of education right from the school

2. Training and management programme to give a boost to afforestation and reduce deforestation

3. To educate villagers about the benefits of various schemes of forestation including social forestry

4. Ecologically viable plants and seeds and saplings should be provided at subsidized rate

5. Rapidly growing plant species needed to be emphasized in supply

6. There is need to bring land reform at village level which would bring a natural declaration of surplus land as village property designated for forest.

7. Village level land survey of landuse should be conducted to demarcate forest areas

8. Such programmes should be launched as to set target for panchayats with regard to development and afforestation

Private sector, cooperative societies, public enterprises and NGOs should be engaged at larger scale for promotion of afforestation.

Factors of Deforestation in India

Fig Tree. (Photo: MOEF GOI)

India has about 19 per cent of its area under forest while ecologically it should have had not less than 33 per cent of land under forest cover.

Although India is characterised by various types of forests but it is dwindling over a couple of centuries. Recent efforts at afforestation are but an aberration in the general trend of decades.

On an average 1.5 lakh hectare forest was lost every year between 1951 and 1980. The rate of deforestation between 1980 and 1990 was at 55,000 hectare a year while between 1990 and 1995, it stood at 4,500 hectare of 450 sq km.

Recently the rate of deforestation has declined due to two factors –

Some strong punitive measures have been taken to check deforestation.

Due to afforestation programmes, the scale of deforestation has been compensated a bit. In 1996, newly afforested area was equal in expanse to deforested area. Even the afforestation is taking place but the real acreage has been decreasing.

Deforestation is the result of a number of factors:

1   

      Agricultural progress – Two types of agricultural practices have been prevalent in India for long. These are shifting agriculture and plantation agriculture. A substantial portion of Indian population has lived in and near forests for centuries. They largely depended on gathering of forest produce to sustain their livelihood.

Now those who had gathering economy have shifted to a more settled economy. The shift in their economic practices necessitated cutting of forests. These people practiced shifting agriculture, which requires fresh and virgin land every few years.

Shifting agriculture proved to be a major factor causing wide-scale deforestation. Finally, this practice was declared illegal with laws like Jhoom Farming Prevention Act, 1976. Though, the practice continued for few more decades as it took lots of persuasion and in sensitizing people living in those areas about the legal and environmental consequences of shifting agriculture.

The effectiveness of the laws is not surmised but it has definitely contributed in slowing down the rate of deforestation. Tribal population growth rate has been very high. Nagaland has showed highest population growth rate for long. Swelling tribal population and need for more dwelling units in their homeland put more and more pressure on forest land which saw vanishing trees.

In the areas where plantation form of agriculture is practiced, deforestation has not much increased in last few decades. Sustained efforts by various governments have ensured that after 1980, plantation area is not increased by cutting down the forests.

After the World War I, tea and other crops brought more areas under plantation acreage in India. In Himachal Pradesh, open forest areas were given to tea plantation even till 1985-86. But, this practice has almost stopped completely.

2.       Fuel wood pressure – A 2015 report by Indiaspend.com said that more than 67 per cent rural households in India depended on firewood or wood chips. It also stated that over 95 per cent rural households in six states – Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal still used traditional fuel such as firewood, dung cakes and agricultural waste for cooking.

According to the Access to Clean Cooking Energy and Electricity Survey of States (ACCESS), only 14 per cent households in rural areas across six states surveyed used biogas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), electricity or natural gas as their primary source for cooking.

Another IndiaSpend report said that the use of LPG increased 7.5 times between 1993-94 and 2011-12 in rural areas across India. About 2 per cent rural households used LPG in 1993-94 while about 15 per cent households used LPG in 2011-12.

This overdependence of vast majority of rural India has caused massive cutting of trees from forests – big and small. Many state governments have passed laws to declare cutting of trees for fuel illegal e.g. in Kerala, Garhwal area of Uttarakhand, most of northeastern states and states along Western Ghats.

3.       Resource utilisation pressure – Various industries and economic activities depend on utilisation of forest resources. Forest products are used and trees cut for paper and pulp industry, woodcraft, chemical and drug industries.

The pressure from woodcraft industry is particularly huge in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Wooden packing of fruits worked like an industry in itself till 1996 in the country. It was particularly taking toll on forests in the northeast and Himalayan states. The practice has become less intensive in recent years.

Tribal subsistence economy also promotes destruction of forests for resource purposes but they have not been able to make economically competitive use of forests.

The loss is much more in comparison to economic gain. The economic gains from forest dependent industries are short-term while the loss is permanent.

4.       Livestock pressure – Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are among the states which have witnessed serious deforestation on account of livestock pressure. It has caused indirect deforestation.

Trans-Himalayan tribes, as part of their traditional practice, take their livestock towards higher altitudes for grazing purposes during spring. Tall grasses could hardly emerge in the region.

Lack of tall grasses results in an ecological situation where horizon A of the soil is not properly developed. In that situation, the vegetation growth becomes scanty.

Continuous grazing on newly emerged grassy surface causes uprooting of grass which leads to soil erosion reducing the capacity of the soil surface to hold running or rainy water. This leads to deterioration of ground water table which ultimately causes decay of tree vegetation in the region.

5.       Development pressure – River valley projects have caused massive deforestation in India. About 4,97,000 hectare or 4,970 sq km forest was lost to river valley projects in the Himalayan region between 1952 and 1977.

Besides, about 1,27,000 hectare of forest was lost in the Himalayan region for large scale industries and another 57,000 hectare was lost to road construction in the same zone. Deforestation has continued for mining, railways, roadways, airports and helipads in the hilly regions.

Chhotanagpur region of Jharkhand has witnessed massive deforestation due to developmental pressure.

6.       Wild fires – Among other factors for deforestation, wild fires are major contributor. High inflammability of trees – especially the old ones - is one big reason for loss of forest. Collision of trees, branches due to high wind speed during hot summers causes huge wild fires in forests. Western Ghats have witnessed several such fires.

Human errors – forced and unforced, both – are also responsible for forest fires. This is a major cause for destruction of forests in tribal dominated areas. Throwing of untrashed beedis by tribals or cigarettes by tourists and other visitors has led to many wild fires.

It is suspected that such fires were deliberately caused by some people with vested interests. In some cases, terrorists and insurgents have created fires in forests to escape security forces or to serve their own purposes.

1993-94 was a bad year for forests. According to the Forest and Environment Ministry’s data 1,428 incidents of wild fires were reported from Maharashtra in 1993, 644 forest fires in Gujarat, 600 in Himachal Pradesh, 461 in Madhya Pradesh, 418 in Jammu and Kashmir, 258 in Uttar Pradesh, 112 in Kerala and 90 in Tamil Nadu.

 In April-May, 2016 forests of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh kept burning for several weeks. Some 1,600 incidents of fires were reported during the period. Air Force helicopters were pressed into use but did not help much to contain the fire. Finally, heavy rain on May 3 slowed down the fire, which went off after raging for few more days. About 4,048 hectare forest was lost to these fires.

7.        Illegal cutting of trees –Kerala is facing big problem due to cutting of trees on large scale. Problem is not less alarming in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern states. Those who get the contracts for cutting of some trees, are suspecting to be the ones who have ended up damaging the forest the most by overcutting.

8.      Tree cutting by tribals – People living in the forest areas are generally those belonging to tribal groups of the Indian population. They have been cutting trees for various kinds of usage. Though, traditionally, such groups have been very forest-friendly but their age practices have become corrupt. Many have shed the old practice of planting more trees in their neighbourhood while continue to believe that cutting trees from forest is their inherited right.

9.       Population growth – Population growth rate in the hilly regions has been high. So, population pressure has caused damage to forests. Immigration in hilly regions is another reason contributing to population pressure on forests of such areas.