Several retired civil servants have asked the finance commission to set aside funds for the Himalayan states as an incentive against deforestation.

In a letter to 16th Finance Commission chairman Arvind Panagariya on Monday, the Constitutional Conduct Group said: "Himalayan states like Himachal, Uttarakhand, Kashmir and Sikkim are slowly going to pieces, literally, under the onslaught of cloudbursts, flash floods, land subsidence and collapsing infrastructure.

"In just the last four years (2022-2025), Himachal has lost 1,200 lives and suffered a loss of ₹18,000 crore in these disasters (and this does not include the indirect loss to trade and economic activities). The position of Uttarakhand is even more dire: in just the last 10 years (as of 2022) it has recorded 18,464 'natural disasters' in which 3,554 lives were lost (not including the colossal number of deaths in the Kedarnath disaster of 2013)....

"North India and its Gangetic plain would not survive without the forests, the glaciers and rivers that originate from Himachal, Kashmir and Uttarakhand, and would soon become a desert: these rivers sustain a population of almost 400 million people and are a lifeline for many cities.... But losing them we are, mainly because of financial compulsions. Himalayan states suffer from a double whammy: on the one hand, they are revenue deficit because they have limited sources of income."

The group explained: "The present methodology for calculating the area under forests and ecology is faulty and disadvantages the mountain states insofar as it excludes the area above the tree line. Much of their geographical area lies above the tree line and comprises snowfields, alpine pastures and glaciers."

They said Himachal (and other Himalayan states) must be compensated by the Centre for their non-monetary, but vital, contribution to the country's well-being, quality of life and in sectors like agriculture, climate control, hydel power, carbon capture and tourism.

"The current weightage given for forests and ecological services is only 10%. This is wholly inadequate considering the imperatives of climate control goals and only disincentivises states from bringing more area under green cover. This weightage needs to be increased to at least 20%; the additional 10% can be located by reducing the weightages for some of the other indicators," they wrote.