Deforestation

Deforestation is the conversion of forested land into land that no longer carries forest cover. Globally, an estimated 40 per cent of tropical forest has already been lost, compared with only about 1 per cent in temperate regions — and the situation in India has been particularly severe. At the start of the twentieth century forests covered about 30 per cent of India's land area; by the century's end this had fallen to 21.54 per cent, well short of the National Forest Policy's (1988) recommended targets of 33 per cent forest cover for the plains and 67 per cent for hill regions.

What drives deforestation

Several human activities contribute to forest loss. A major one is converting forest land into farmland to feed a growing population. Trees are also felled directly for timber, firewood and to create grazing land for cattle, among other uses. In India's north-eastern states, a traditional form of shifting cultivation known as Jhum cultivation ("slash-and-burn") has also played a role: farmers clear a patch of forest, burn the felled vegetation, and use the resulting ash as fertiliser for a period of farming or grazing, after which the land is left fallow for several years to recover before the cycle moves elsewhere. When practised with a long enough fallow period, the land can genuinely recover between cycles; but as population pressure has grown and the same land is cultivated more frequently, that recovery period has effectively disappeared, and the practice has increasingly contributed to lasting deforestation rather than sustainable rotation.

Consequences of deforestation

Removing forest cover has several serious downstream effects. Because trees store large amounts of carbon in their biomass, cutting them down releases this carbon and raises atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Deforestation also destroys habitat and so drives biodiversity loss, disrupts the hydrologic (water) cycle, accelerates soil erosion, and in severe cases can tip a region toward desertification.

Reforestation …