Sixty former government administrators have claimed that the Centre’s latest biennial forest assessment report is scientifically flawed and creates a false impression that India’s forests are in good health and the green cover is increasing.
The former officials, who are members of the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), said on Monday that the report released by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), a unit of the Union environment ministry, in December adopted a flawed methodology to evaluate the country’s forest cover.
The India State of Forests Report (ISFR) 2023 noted a 1,445sqkm increase in the combined forest and tree cover, which includes a 156sqkm increase in the forest cover. In contrast, the forest cover had increased by 1,540sqkm from 2019 to 2021.
The CCG members have accused the FSI of incorrect calculations, saying between ISFR 2021 and ISFR 2023, India lost 1,488sqkm of unclassed forests, according to ISFR 2023 data, which reveals a decrease in forest area and not an increase of 1,445sqkm as claimed by the report.
“We observe with great alarm that while our forests are steadily deteriorating… the ISFR presents a rosy picture, lulling us into a state of complacency,” the CCG said in an open letter to the environment minister.
The members include former chief secretaries to several states among other senior administrators. The CCG describes itself as a group of former civil servants “who feel strongly about upholding the provisions of the country’s Constitution” and “have no affiliation with any political party”.
They have expressed concern that the methodology to evaluate forest cover is flawed as it continues as in previous years to include orchards and gardens of one hectare or larger area with canopy cover of 10 per cent which do not qualify as forests.
They said the report counted coconut, oil palm and rubber plantations as forest cover. The reported increase comes mainly from plantations with mango contributing 13.25 per cent and coconut 4.37 per cent. Ground truthing — a process through which information from satellite imagery is verified through sample ground surveys — is an important element of the assessment but has not been done adequately to exclude these non-forest areas.
Publicly available satellite imagery shows a drastic decline, the members said, adding that more than 3,00,000 hectares of forest land have been diverted for non-forestry use over the past 15 years but this is not reflected in the ISFR 2023 report.
The ISFR 2023 report has noted that 92,989sqkm of forests have been degraded between 2021 and 2023. The CCG members have described this as a “disgraceful outcome” and criticised the ISFR for promoting a so-called “Green Credit Programme (GCP)” for plantations in the degraded areas.
“The GCP is a flawed scheme allowing business houses to earn green credits by paying for dubious plantations which can then be used for diverting forests,” the CCG members said. “The matter has been challenged in court and is awaiting a decision. We in the CCG have also written a letter on March 19, 2024, pointing out the perils of the GCP.”
“We request the government to take a serious note of erroneous and misleading reports such as the ISFR2023,” they wrote. “We request you to ensure that future reports are scientific and factual. False data feeds complacency, justifies further forest diversion, and fails to provide stringent measures for forest conservation.”