India hosted World Environment Day this year with active participation from government, civil society, private organisations and citizens in large numbers. This reflects an evolved awareness and concern towards environment – or did it?
Like every year, the dominant activity on this occasion was a mass drive towards ‘greening’ through distribution of saplings and plantation. Before we rejoice in having contributed “our bit” towards saving the environment, it’s pertinent to understand how much and where the trees were planted, using Chhattisgarh as a case study.
Chhattisgarh’s total ‘forest cover’ is 55,547 sq. km (41.09% of its geographic area) according to the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2017. According to the ISFR, the term ‘forest cover’ refers “to all lands more than one hectare in area with a tree canopy of more than 10% irrespective of land use, ownership and legal status. It may include even orchards, bamboo, palm etc. and is accessed through remote sensing.”
Forest cover within ‘recorded forest area’ of the state stands at 42,383 sq. km (31.35% of the total area of the state). Before getting ahead, let us unwrap this term. It refers “to all the geographic areas recorded as ‘forests’ in government records. This mainly consists of Reserved Forests (RF) and Protected Forests (PF) notified under the provisions of Indian Forest Act 1927 or its counterpart state acts”. Of this, 30% is classified as degraded, which is 16,662 sq. km. This leaves us with 25,721 sq. km, which is a forest in real terms – amounting to only 19.02 % of Chhattisgarh.
The forest, other than the recorded forest area, stands at 13,164 sq. km (9.73% of the state). The areas outside recorded forests are not a part of RF or PF; instead, they are plantations on or near private/community lands, roads, rail, canal sides, rubber/tea/coffee plantations, etc.
Now, can plantations be considered forests? Are we mistaking plantation drives to be a remedial measure for forest growth?
(Mis)Understanding forests
Our understanding of the term ‘forest’ has been limited because we have constantly assumed it as being synonymous to plantations and a fluctuating degree of greenery.
According to Peter Smetacek, founder of the Butterfly Research Centre, Bhimtal, Uttarakhand, a forest is a “’self-sown’ and ‘self-regenerating’ community of plants that supports a community of creatures dependent on those plants, and on each other, for food and shelter.”
He traces the genesis of the confusion to Sir Dietrich Brandis, a German forester called upon to establish the Indian Forest Service during the second half of the 19th century. Brandis provided valuable insights that are still followed, and helped set up a structured Indian Forest Service. But it was the translation of certain terms from German to English that resulted in a confusion between plantations and forests.
As Smetacek has written, in German, ‘forest’ is described by three words: forst (plantation of commercially important forest trees), wald (natural forest) and urwald (primeval forest). The terms Forstwirtschaft and Waldwirtschaft both translate to ‘forestry’ in English, and Brandis failed to establish an official difference between forst and wald, which was then not considered important.
The plantation drive
While we do not have any data or even indicative numbers for the trees planted by citizens, we do have numbers for saplings planted by the state forest department.
The forest department carries out plantation drives under certain schemes: plantations in degraded forests, river beds, road sides, urban areas, encroachment areas, fast-growing plantations, bamboo plantations, social forestry, greening and sapling distributions.
Before considering the absolute number of trees planted, let’s get an idea of the total area where greening drives are being carried out. The total area under ‘forest’ stands at 55,547 sq. km and net cultivated area, at 45,924 sq. km. Considering these areas can’t be used for greening plantations, we are left with 33,721 sq. km, which is 24.94% of the area of the state. Let’s remember that rivers, water bodies, settlements, etc. also occupy this area, so this figure is only indicative of the plantation area.
The state forest department has been planted 59.6 million trees in the last two years just under the greening drive, according to the Government of Chhattisgarh’s Economic Survey of 2017-18. This excludes the number of trees planted by citizens, civil society, private organisations and other agencies, and under other plantation schemes two years prior to when the data was collected.
Ensuring that planted trees survive is a delicate task, requiring long-term planning, monitoring, care and the know-how related to species-specific standardised methods, according to Rakesh Chaturvedi, an IFS officer. We also don’t know the survival rate of planted trees outside the recorded forest area, nor do we have any scientific mechanism for deciding the number of trees to be planted, the species to be planted or the area on which they will be planted.
Plantation in degraded forest not a solution
The degraded forest, 30% of the state’s forested area, is ‘developed’ by the state forest development corporation to increase its ‘productivity’. This corporation carries plants teak and bamboo, which are then felled on a rotational basis. The revenue is shared between the forest department and the communities that dependent on the forest. So now, do forests require management or do plantations?
In Chhattisgarh, naturally growing species like saliha, kullu, bija, haldu, etc. have declined because nothing else grows around teak. We must ask ourselves: are we letting our degraded forest to regenerate naturally? No, because a forest requires ‘safeguarding’ and not ‘management’ for natural regeneration to work.
The solution lies in shifting our focus towards conservation, away from plantation. This is a delicate shift as there are communities, mostly tribals, who depend on degraded forests for revenue, and won’t be possible without policymakers being intent and willing to see the transition through. They could start with the practice of rotational felling: executed like clockwork, it should go hand in hand with ‘rotational conservation zones’, too, where the land is protected carefully to ensure natural regeneration. Haryana embarked on just such a journey by planting fewer saplings to let its forests grow naturally, in 2016.
When a degraded forest is left undisturbed, it engenders ecological succession. Perennial weeds and some grasses are gradually replaced by herbs, which in turn give way to woody plants that dominate the area. The speed and efficacy of this change depends on many geographical and environment factors. Its most striking characteristic is the replacement of one plant community with another with different growth pattern, until the latter terminates into the highest type of vegetation possible in the environment. This process is biological, not physical. In Chhattisgarh, the highest form of vegetation is the sal forest.
It will be possible to call ‘Environment Day’ only when we monitor the trees that have already been planted. There might be fewer photo opportunities but, on the upside, we will have indicative local figures to highlight our concern towards “greening” and “re-greening” the same area over and over again. We need to quickly shift our focus from plantations towards conservation. Unfortunately, conservation is not possible unless we know the correct terms – or the geography of what exists where. It can’t be stressed enough: all that is green is not forest.
Anupam Singh Sisodia is a naturalist currently documenting the butterflies of Chhattisgarh. He can be reached at sisodia.anupam@gmail.com and @iAnupamSingh.