RESTORATION OPPORTUNITIES ATLAS OF INDIA (original) (raw)
Related papers
Forest Landscape Restoration in India: Antecedents, experience and prognoses.
Forest Matters, 2016
The 'forest landscape restoration' (FLR) approach seems to be the latest international favourite in forest improvement and climate change mitigation strategies. The significant feature of FLR is the multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral, and community-based approach, taking care of both physical-technical and social-equity concerns. However, there have been previous examples of such an integrated, holistic, approach in forestry, such as social forestry and joint forest management (JFM), and the landscape approach has been explicitly incorporated in the recent Green India Mission (GIM) of 2010. The paper traces the changes in forest policy, the experience of social forestry and JFM in the Western Ghats Forestry Project, and suggests ways to reconcile the physical output-oriented approach ofthe implementing department with the bottom-up, process approach of FLR.
suggested Citation: WRI India. 2018.Overview of the Restoration Opportunities Atlas. Mumbai. WRI India. Available at https://india.restorationatlas.org/about. forest protection and tree-based landscape restoration underpin many domestic policy goals and international commitments made by the Government of india. The National Forest Policy, 1988 aims to establish forest and tree cover over 33 percent of India' s geographical area. India' s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) as part of the Paris Agreement on climate change commits to sequestering an additional 2.5 to 3 billion tons CO 2 equivalent by 2030 through improved forest and tree cover. Official estimates suggest that achieving this target requires protecting and improving existing forest cover while also extending tree cover in more than 25 to 30 million hectares (MoEFCC, 2017). Forest protection and landscape restoration are also essential components of the Sustainable Development Goals especially SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). With over 700 million people in rural India economically dependent on forests and agriculture, improving forest and tree cover at scale can make a transformative contribution to strengthening rural economy, with benefits for local communities including women, tribals and other marginalized groups.
Climate Change Strategies and Forests in India
Forest Matters, June 2015
Discusses the world climate change prognoses issued by bodies like the IPCC, the optimal strategy for countries like India that have much lag to make up in terms of energy consumption and per capita incomes and standard of living. Reviews the limited relevance of the AR-CDM and REDD-Plus mechanisms in India, where national programs for forest carbon sequestration and sustainable forestry are already in place.
envfor.nic.in
India ranks 10th in the list of most forested nations in the world with 76.87 million ha of forest and tree cover. Like other forests of the world, our forests also provide critical ecosystem goods and services. However, the significant role of forests in carbon storage and sequestration has increased their importance manifold and brought them to the centre-stage of climate change mitigation strategies.
Forests Policies and Programmes in India: Implications for Climate Change Adaptation
Climate change is a major global environmental and developmental challenge and climate proofing of vulnerable sectors, programmes, natural systems and communities by integrating adaptation and mitigation options into planning process are increasingly becoming an integral part of development. The basic premises on which this could happen are the national and sectoral policies that govern any programmes and actions implemented on ground. This study reviews existing policies, plans and programmes and their implications for climate change. Based on the analyses, key areas of research, policy initiatives and institutional and capacity development needs have been identified, to facilitate climate change adaptation. The forest policies formulated so far in India have been broadly aimed at conservation, reduction of pressure on forests and provisioning of biomass to the large forest dependent population for their fuel and fodder needs apart from generating revenue through production and sale of timber. However, these have not been formulated with climate change as a consideration and therefore may become less effective as climate change and its impacts become increasingly evident. The study clearly identifies that the current policies and programmes have elements/features and activities that directly or indirectly contribute positively towards adaptation, although the primary implications are towards biodiversity and to some extent ecosystem functioning. It finally highlights the need for incorporating climate change concerns in forest sector development programmes and also to address the issue of climate change.
Nature-based Solutions for Resilient Ecosystems and Societies. Disaster Resilience and Green Growth, 2020
Bonn Challenge is an ambitious global restoration pledge that was launched in 2011, with the nature-based solutions (NbS) strategy of forest landscape restoration (FLR) as its underlying principle. India has one of the largest pledges from Asia with the aim of bringing 13 million hectares of degraded land into restoration by the year 2020, and an additional eight million hectares by 2030, and thus should maintain a leadership position in South Asia on Bonn Challenge and landscape restoration. Government of India (GoI) and IUCN have prepared the first country progress report towards the Bonn Challenge pledge in 2018 which showed that India has already brought 9.8 million hectares into restoration. This report is the first progress report from any Bonn Challenge country and is also unique as it includes restoration efforts undertaken by the government, NGOs and the private sector. Although the government was the majority contributor (94.4%), the efforts of NGOs (3.6%) and private companies (2%) are important as they have the technical expertise to guarantee success. Three best practices of landscape restoration from across different ecosystems of India have been detailed here so that they may act as learnings for future restoration efforts. Lessons learnt from past restoration efforts have informed the design of a flagship project on FLR launched in five Indian States by GoI and IUCN, which will maintain India’s leadership on Bonn Challenge across South Asia.
Climate Change and India’s Forests
India in a Warming World, 2019
Forests influence, and are impacted by, climate in multiple ways. India has pledged to sequester 2.5–3 gigatonne of carbon dioxide equivalent in its forests by 2030. As per official estimates, India already has a positive carbon sequestration rate, suggesting that little extra effort is required to achieve this target, but these estimates are debated. Prioritizing carbon sequestration can also adversely affect local livelihoods, biodiversity, and hydrological regulation functions. Moreover, the mechanisms through which the state hopes to achieve this target do not take into consideration the history of conflict and ongoing shifts in forest governance. The influence of forests on regional climate, especially rainfall, further complicates this debate. Climate change will, in turn, influence India’s forests in complex and unclear ways: a possible expansion of the moist broadleaf forests in central India and a shrinking of temperate broadleaf and alpine forests; a possible increase in p...
Natural Science, 2013
Forests have significant economic and ecological value as a provider of ecosystem services, being home to much of the world's biodiversity and supporting the livelihoods of many people. Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) is a critical component of the overall greenhouse gas emission reductions and now the significance of REDD+ (which is not only about reducing emissions but halting and reversing forest loss), in delivering climate change mitigation benefits along with co-benefits, is increasingly being recognized in global climate negotiations. Northeast India provides a tremendous potential for harnessing REDD+ activities with about 66% of the total geographical area of the region being covered by forests. This paper attempts to explore this potential besides estimating the area available for different options under REDD+ as well as the mitigation potential using COMAP model, overcoming limitations of existing studies or a lack of them. Within this, the status of forests and biodiversity along with drivers of deforestation in north east India are documented and an assessment of the potential for taking up reducing deforestation and degradation and enhancement of carbon stocks and afforestation is conducted both at the state as well as district level. It was found that northeastern states have been experiencing net forest loss during the last few years along with significant scale forest degradation, with Nagaland followed by Arunachal Pradesh offering maximum potential for "reducing deforestation" option under REDD and the total incremental annual mitigation potential of the four REDD+ activities in northeast India being 29.2 MtCO 2 for 2030.