Amendments will have lasting impact

The dilution of laws misses the point by a wide margin as it tries to look at the green cover in isolation

The proposed dilution of restrictions on land acquisition while seeking to encourage plantation on private land in order to meet the carbon sink capacity, misses the point by a wide margin as it tries to look at the green cover in isolation. The biodiversity and the entire ecosystem of the natural forests play a huge role in creating a balance that can’t be replaced by plantations. The degradation and fragmentation of such forests not only releases high amounts of carbon but also erodes their carbon sink capacity.

N H Ravindranath, member of the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change, noted that besides mitigating climate change forests are critical for the multiple ecosystem services and livelihoods. “According to IPCC, conserving the existing forests is the most cost-effective strategy to reduce emissions and will also help India reach net Zero-emission target. Every hectare of forest must be conserved and protected for carbon, biodiversity and water-related ecosystem services. New plantations cannot compensate for natural forests with respect to carbon sink or biodiversity. A hectare of good Western Ghats forests may contain up to 300 tonnes of carbon, and even five hectare of afforested plantations cannot store 300 tonnes of carbon in 50 years, especially in the soil,” he said.

Effects of global warming were projected at a macro scale till recently, making it difficult to relate to them. In Karnataka, experts and scientists have collaborated over the last two years to understand the impact at the district level.

Karnataka’s draft action plan on climate change has projections for the short-term (2030) and long-term (2080) impacts of climate change. The study by Ravindranath and G S Sreenivasa Reddy, former director of Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, has sounded a warning on weather extremes, despite the apparent increase in green cover.

The study projected that the average rainy days in Karnataka will go up to six days in the low emission scenario and up to nine days in the high emission scenario. More worryingly, the number of “very high” intensity rain (above 100 mm) incidents will increase in more than 15 districts, making them vulnerable to floods and the consequent loss of lives, crops and property. Statistics from the Forest Survey of India shows that Karnataka’s forest cover has hovered around 1.9 lakh sq km between 1987 and 2017. “However, if one looks at the quality of the forests, the evergreen or dense forest has decreased and the fragmentation has made the ecosystems vulnerable.

During the same time, the rainfall variation has increased and the extreme weather incidents have gone up,” a senior official said.

Ravindranath noted that compensatory afforestation to offset forest diversion to industry, infrastructure or agriculture is not an option from the perspective of carbon or biodiversity and will contribute to worsening weather conditions.

“Deforestation, forest degradation, forest conversion to other uses leads to CO2 emissions. Further degraded and fragmented forests make forests highly vulnerable to climate change, leading to shifts in forest types, irreversible loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services,” he added.