The latest India State of Forest report says a quarter of the country’s geographical area now is under forest cover—a spread of over 8.27 lakh sq km, which is a 1,445.8-sq-km increase over the previous survey done in 2021. To be precise, this area is a combination of forests as well as tree cover outside of them. The Forest Survey of India defines forest cover as areas of one hectare or more—notwithstanding their ownership, legal status or use—with a tree canopy density of at least 10 percent.
This was measured at 7.15 lakh sq km last year. Over the assessment years two years apart, the forest cover alone has expanded by 156.4 sq km. There are other positives in the report, including an improvement in the mangrove cover, which acts as a bio-shield against natural calamities for India’s numerous coastal communities.
However, a look beyond the headline numbers reveals worrying realities. The county’s recorded forest area has improved by just 7.28 sq km between 2021 and 2023. Now couple it with the unsettling level of forest degradation—measured at a staggering 92,989 sq km in just the decade between 2011 and 2021. The 2023 survey says that recorded forest areas stand at 5.20 lakh sq km, including 91,000 sq km of very dense forests, 2.43 lakh sq km of moderately dense forests, and 1.85 lakh sq km open forests.
The report also says that over 40,709 sq km of very dense and moderately dense forests have been degraded into open forests over the decade. Similarly, 5,573 sq km of forest canopies have been reduced to scrubs. The scariest part is that the canopy density of another 46,707 sq km has degraded to non-forest land—which means large parts of forests are being cleaned up every year. This rapid degradation is as alarming as deforestation.
The threat it poses to biodiversity, pollution control and the essential work of forests as carbon sinks is enormous. This comes after a March 2023 report from a UK-based agency that analysed deforestation trends in 98 countries over 30 years to show that India ranked second only after Brazil—home to the world’s greatest rainforest, Amazon—in the worrying trend. We must formulate strategies to arrest and reverse this worrying trend as climate change looms larger.