From mint · T. R. Shankar Raman · · 1m 30s
Misreading the forest: Why planting trees cannot replace rich biological ecosystems
Planting trees can't restore ecosystems: India's afforestation fails to protect biodiversity.
In brief
Planting trees can't restore ecosystems: India's afforestation fails to protect biodiversity. India's compensatory afforestation programs replace lost forests with monocultures, harming wildlife and ecosystems. Originally reported by mint.
The forest crisis
Public environmental efforts often cause harm by oversimplifying ecological complexity.
“The sheer success of growing public consciousness to save the environment can sometimes strike body blows to the very subjects they were meant to save”
Compensatory afforestation
India's law requires developers to plant trees elsewhere when destroying forest land.
“The Forest Conservation Act (1980) legislated that any diversion of existing forest land for non-forest uses required a "land for land" and "tree for tree" swap”
Afforestation vs reforestation
Afforestation creates forests on land that never had trees; reforestation restores forests after damage.
“Reforestation implies bringing forests back into lands that earlier had forests, but which were cleared or damaged”
Great Nicobar case
Destroying 13,000 hectares of rainforest in Great Nicobar requires planting trees 3,000 km away in Haryana.
“A proposed transshipment port, township, greenfield airport, power plant, and luxury tourism boom is slated to destroy 13,000 hectares of mature tropical rainforest”
Ecoregions matter
Great Nicobar's rainforests differ from Haryana's arid thorn scrub ecosystems.
“Great Nicobar falls within the Nicobar Islands Rainforests terrestrial ecoregion, a primarily wet tropical environment with dense evergreen forests”
Monetizing nature
Forests are valued at ₹15.96 lakh per hectare for dense rainforests, less for grasslands.
“The NPV for open ecosystems, such as grasslands or savannahs, remains as low as ₹6.7 lakh per hectare”
Squandered funds
CAMPA funds plant monocultures of alien species that harm local ecosystems.
“The tree species planted often include alien and invasive species, such as subabul or Acacia wattles, that are convenient to grow and plant, but harmful to local ecosystems”
Restoration science
Ecological restoration uses native species and reference ecosystems to revive damaged areas.
“Ecological restoration aims to spur revival by first pinpointing what the native ecosystem state was before it was damaged or degraded”
Central Ridge failure
Bulldozers destroy soil and native vegetation while removing invasive mesquite trees.
“Bulldozers are now at work trying to remove the mesquite in order to reintroduce native plants”
Native restoration
NCF has restored 150 hectares of rainforest with 102,000 native saplings over 25 years.
“More than 102,000 saplings of over 300 native species raised here have been planted to actively restore over 150 hectares of rainforest”
Citizen power
Residents protect trees from felling projects in Bengaluru and Dehradun.
“In July, Dehradun citizens rose to defend over 4,000 trees, including mature sal trees, slated for felling to widen the Bhaniyawala-Rishikesh stretch”
Rainforest recovery
Rainforests in Anamalai show signs of recovery after 25 years of restoration.
“The density of trees and their match with benchmark sites and other parameters like canopy cover, carbon storage, and bird diversity have increased from 14% to over 80%”
The solution
Protect existing ecosystems and use native species for restoration instead of planting trees elsewhere.
“The first rule of ecological restoration is thus: protect existing natural ecosystems”
The short version
India's compensatory afforestation programs replace lost forests with monocultures, harming wildlife and ecosystems.
