Deforestation Trends in India - Case Study Example

Deforestation & reforestation trends in India Table of contents Introduction to deforestation The rapidly increasing loss of forests in India has many factors responsible for its existence. These factors include all the government and non government agencies’ poor management and carelessness towards the potential issue of deforestation. Other contributing factors are economic development and level of corruption in the system. The outcome of deforestation has created scarcity of resources and has also affected the nature in a negative way. This situation has arisen because of endless thirst of the nation for development which is given more priority over the issue of deforestation. The evolution of deforestation in India has begun with the arrival of British government in India during 19th century. During the year of 1823, the governor of presidency during that period, Thomas Munro acted as a forest conservator with a belief that private business practices of forestry programs will be adopted soon to meet the balance of supply and demand. Due to this belief the country faced a continuous loss of forest resources for almost four consecutive decades. The developmental steps taken by the British government supported the act of deforestation in India. When the government realized the problem during 1864 the Governor-general Lord Dalhousie brought the German forester Dietrich Brandis to look after the problem and control the situation. Many more initiatives were taken afterwards in order to conserve the forests resources of India by recruiting manpower for the protection and control over the loss of the natural resource. It took almost another decade after these initiatives were taken up for the conservation of forest resource, to come into effect and proper law and orders were passed for the protection of the resource and resulted into Indian Forest Act in 1878. After the law and orders came into effect the situation was supposed to be under control but corruption adversely influenced them a lot and developmental activities were prioritized over the issue of deforestation. The corruption restricted the law and orders to show its proper effectiveness which is persistent till date. Deforestation activities can be beneficial also in cases where the cleared land can be used for the agricultural and farming activities. The technologies used for agricultural purpose still fails sometimes to sustain the farming and agricultural activities on certain tropical land formed by clearing of forest areas. Those lands are either made abandoned or used as less productive areas compared to other land used for agriculture and farming activities. The country requires productive lands for the fulfillment of all the requirements for its rapidly growing population. Contrary to this the country has continuously utilized its forest land to meet the requirement of infrastructure development and hence encouraged the deforestation activities. Certain other ways of living of people has also contributed to the loss of natural resources like usage of organic substances such as crop residues and animal dung as fuel. This reduces the level of organic content of the soil which leads to soil erosion decreasing the fertility of the soil. The consequences of deforestation has affected the nation profoundly in Asian region since the rapidly growing population extracts majority of land for its usage while reducing the nutrients and organic content of the soil by inappropriate land usage practices serves as another source of support towards deforestation. The issue of deforestation is of major concern for the country since it possesses a vast range of floral and faunal resources which makes it a potential country for development. The country’s forest resources also serve as a reliable ecosystem for existence of about 50 million people of the total population. The country has performed various activities for the estimation of deforestation rate at national and state level but the reports proved to have many differences which reduced the effectiveness of the activities. The deforestation does not proves to be the immediate cause of increased rate of land degradation which means loss of nutrients and minerals from the soil making them less productive and reducing the canopy covering over the land. According to the report of Forest Survey of India 39% of Indian forests possess only 10 to 40% of canopy cover. Two of the organizations concerned to forest conservation named as FAO and NRSA conducted surveys on estimation of deforestation rate during the period of 1981 to 1990. The reports prepared by the two organizations varied significantly as their approaches were also different from each other for the survey. The survey conducted by FAO was a part of Global assessment of deforestation rate and the survey report indicated 0.6% of deforestation rate in India during 1981-1990. On the other hand the research conducted by NRSA concluded the declination in deforestation in India by 0.04%. Per year during 1982-1990. More detailed information pertaining to the two studies and the difference in their approaches are described in the figure below. Deforestation estimations by FAO and NRSA (Source- Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) Factors responsible for deforestation Numerous factors are responsible for deforestation which are of political, social and technological nature and has direct and profound effect on the natural resources of the country. Most prominent cause for deforestation is population growth of the country and its economy which is still in its developing stage and has more requirements to be fulfilled for its development. The population growth creates many forces such as increase in pollution, food and shelter, high demand of land for different purpose. The relationship between population growth and deforestation rate can be established from the fact that the deforestation of land started at ~ 67 million hectares with a steady growth in deforestation rate at 0.0294 million. Below given figure describes the gradual effect of population growth of deforestation rate in India. Population growth and deforestation rate (Source- Leonardo Caion-Demaestri & Zoë Freedberg) Most of the factors responsible for increased deforestation rate are interrelated and one leads to formation of other factor. As the population growth impacts the deforestation rate many of the other factors which arose due to increase in population have impact on forest resources. With an increase in population the requirements of the population also hikes up such as food, shelter, fuel, clothes, etc. Trees are the sole provider of all of the mentioned requirements while the requirement of space is yet another major issue which leads to clearance of forest areas for acquiring space for residential and commercial purposes. The sole reason for increased deforestation rate is the uncontrolled population growth of the country. Controlling the population growth of the country could be a potential solution for the present problem. The government has initiated numerous programs on population control in the country but the major hurdle being faced by the nation is low level of education and literacy rate of the country. Education is one of the best ways to empower people and make them aware of these potential problems so thy can cooperate in controlling the rate of deforestation and conserve the valuable resource. Education will enable the population to control over the birth rate which will lead to reduce the population growth rate which will result into lowering level of deforestation rate. More areas of forests will facilitate natural phenomena to take place in its normal rate resulting into higher availability of oxygen and lowering of global temperature which is concerned with another issue of global warming. As the factors are identified there also exists a relationship between all of them making them inter-linked with each other. Certain other factors associated with localized regions of India such as Northern India which is one of the “Hot Spots” of the world because of its enriched floral resources. In past two decades the region has seen heavy loss of forest coverage area which was 64% of the geographic area against the average national geographic area of 19.39%. The loss started during 1980s and was valued 635 sq km and by 1993-95 the value reached to 783 sq km without showing any declination. During 1995-97 the area measured as the lost forest cover was 316 sq km and showed 278 sq km during 1997-99. Reforestation- trends and practices in India Many of the government and non government associations are working on the process of reforestation in the country. For proper conservation of the floral and faunal resources reserve forests and sanctuaries have been established in the country. One of them is Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary which is located in the lower foothills of Himalayan region. Certain portions of the sanctuary was used as a site for commercial activities of timber during 1990s but as the forest regulations came into effect these commercial activities within the forest area was restricted. The National Forest Policy passed in 1988 played a major role in controlling the activities. Similarly another national forest named Taboda Andhari Tiger Reserve which is located in Maharashtra faces another problem which is due to high population density in and around the forest area. Due to high density of people the forest resources are being used by the local people adversely affects the forest area coverage. People residing in villages near or around the forest area depend on the forest for their survival. Authorities have restricted them from these practices but have found very slight difference in reducing the loss of forest area. It is assumed that the protection of the forest areas can be done only by involving the community people living around the area. Effective implementation of reforestation activities include commitment and involvement of community people living around the affected areas and support from the central government to such initiatives towards protection and conservation of forest resources. The effective deforestation can also be achieved by bringing awareness regarding this issue and distributing the activities of forest management among the local people. According to Rudel et al. in 2005 there are five major pathways which can facilitate the reforestation processes. Among those five pathways first way describes the ‘spontaneous’ reforestation which refers to those rural farming lands which are left uncared due to migration of people to other locations in search of employment. These farming areas are either abandoned or no farming is done over there. This helps the land for re-growth which supports the reforestation activities. The second pathway advocates the re-growth of forest land by plantation of more plants by government and private agencies which takes the responsibility of specific degraded land and forest areas. Third pathway is very much resembling to the second one where the plantation activities are handled by the land owners individually. This simultaneous practice of agriculture and forestry brings the concept of agro-forestry among people which focuses on reforestation around the farming areas along with the farming land. This helps in increasing the canopy cover over the forest areas. Conclusion Deforestation since its initiation has been taken up as a serious issue to think upon and many measures of protection and control are taken up nationwide as well as globally to overcome the situation. The current trend of deforestation as per the Global Forest Assessment of 2005 the plantation activities have been increased but the rate is mere 5% of the total forest area which is requires to be increased. The primary forest area still holds a value of 36% of total area while every year around 6 million hectares are either lost or modified for the sake of development or other relevant activities. The data obtained from the assessment of annual change in growing stocks for India indicates value of 7,200 cubic metres/year in 2000-05 which was 29,900 cubic metres/year during the period of 1990-2000 while the value of growing stock per hectare remained unchanged at 0.08 cubic metres/ha/year. Trends have also shown that people are getting involved into reforestation activities to earn incentives offered by the government. The employment rate has also been improved due to requirement in forestry sector for its conservation and management. Awareness among people seems to be most potential solution towards the present problem of forest conservation. References “Deforestation” Think Quest Team 27 October 2009 Sustaining Tropical Forest Resources: Reforestation of Degraded Lands, May 1983. Caion-Demaestri, Leonardo & Zoë Freedberg , Population growth. 27 October 2009 Kant, Promode & R P S Katwal. 2003. Exploring Possibilities of Reforestation of Forest Lands Exposed to Encroachment and Shifting Cultivation in the North Eastern India through Clean Development Mechanism. < http://www.amity.edu/aigwes/4.pdf> Nagendra, Harini. Reforestation in the human dominated landscapes of South Asia n.d. < http://www.clas.ufl.edu/lueci/southworth/reforestation-book/Nagendra-chapter7.pdf> FAO. Global Forest Resources Assessment. 2005. < http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra2005/en> Lovera et al. n.d. The hottest REDD issues: Rights, Equity, Development, Deforestation and Governance by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. < http://cmsdata.iucn.org/downloads/redd_issues__rights_equity_and_deforestation_ceesp.pdf> Menon, Shaily & Kamaljit S Bawa. 1998. Deforestation in the Tropics: Reconciling Disparities in Estimates for India .Grand Valley State University. < http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=biopeerpubs> Read More