Consequences of deforestation in India, and approaches to restore forests and use land sustainably

Introduction

India's forests protect its soil, rivers and wildlife and support millions of forest-dependent people. Their loss sets off a chain of damage, and repairing it needs both replanting and a wiser way of using land.

Main consequences of deforestation in India

1. Soil erosion. Once the protective cover is gone, the exposed soil is quickly washed away in the rains, and streams in cleared areas run brown with silt.
2. Less water through the year. Rain on deforested land flows straight into rivers instead of being held underground, so wells and streams fail in the dry season.
3. Lower farm yields. Agriculture near cleared forests suffers from soil loss, and forest pollinators such as bees decline, reducing crop and fruit yields.
4. Loss of wildlife. Animals lose their habitat, and as forests are broken into small patches, their species die out; habitat loss and fragmentation, especially of forests, are leading causes of today's high extinction rates.
5. Loss of forest services. Forests maintain oxygen levels, remove carbon dioxide, regulate water and slow erosion, besides giving food, fuel, timber, fodder and medicinal plants; in the long run these losses far outweigh the short-term gain from clearing.

Approaches to restore forests

• People's participation through Joint Forest Management. Under JFM, local communities and the Forest Department manage forests together through village forest committees; the guidelines of 2000 require that at least 25 per cent of the income from the area goes to the community, and by 2002 there were 63,618 JFM committees managing over 140,953 sq km of forest in 27 States.
• Protected areas and sacred groves. Biodiversity-rich forests are legally protected as biosphere reserves, national parks and sanctuaries, and community-protected sacred groves (in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills, the Aravallis, the Western Ghats and Bastar, among others) shelter rare plants.
• Agroforestry and wasteland reclamation. Growing trees together with crops or livestock puts degraded land to several uses at once, and reclaiming wastelands with suitable methods brings cover back to eroded land.
• Afforestation with native species. Replanting should use indigenous trees so that the local ecosystem, not just tree cover, is recreated.
• Balancing development and forests. Forests often stand on rich mineral deposits and on the steep valley sides suited to dams, so mining and irrigation plans must be weighed against forest conservation before they go ahead.

Approaches to promote sustainable land use

• A rational land-use policy that decides how much land goes to farming, industry, settlement and dams, and where, choosing alternative sites for factories or dams rather than destroying a wilderness that cannot be recreated.
• Keeping wild land: at least 10 per cent of the land and water bodies of each ecosystem should be kept as wilderness.
• Agroforestry on farms and village commons, so that fuelwood and fodder come from planted trees rather than natural forest.

For example, a village forest committee in Odisha that protects its regenerating sal forest, sells fodder grass from it and plants fruit trees on its field bunds combines all three approaches.

Conclusion

Deforestation in India costs soil, water, crops and species. It can be reversed by involving local people, protecting what remains, restoring degraded land with native trees and agroforestry, and planning land use so that forests are not the first thing sacrificed.