It is not all gloom and doom as far as the country’s environment is concerned — a sneak preview of India’s State of the Forest report, expected to be formally released next month, shows that our forest cover is actually increasing by nearly 2,000 square kilometres.When the report for 2001 is released by the Minister of Environment and Forests T.R. Baalu — and he will do it with a lot of fanfare — the country’s total forest cover will cross 20 per cent for the first time.In 1999, the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s State of the World’s Forest Report had acknowledged that India was the only developing country where the forest cover was actually increasing.Although the exact figures are yet to be disclosed, the trends are clear. In 1999, the forest cover was up from 19.27 per cent in 1997 to 19.39 per cent of the geographic area. This is the second year that the figures will register an upward trend. However, the 33 per cent target set by the Forest Conservation policy is still a long way off.According to provisional estimates, dense forests are increasing by 3,512 sq km. Technically, areas with tree cover of canopy density of 40 per cent and above are identified as dense forests while those with canopy density of 10-40 per cent are identified as open forests.States that have shown an increase — both in open and dense forests — are Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. A case worth investigating is Madhya Pradesh, which has lost nearly 1,000 sq km of dense forests while gaining about 1,700 sq km of open forests. On the other hand, Maharashtra has gained 3,000 sq km of dense forests while losing 2,000 sq km of open forests.Among the states which have lost their dense forests are: Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Bihar, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. But the picture is not so grim even in these states as they have all registered an increase in their open forests.The other Northeast states don’t fare so well. Assam has lost 400 sq km of its forest area while Meghalaya has lost 273 sq km. This is the third time in a row that these two states have registered a downward trend. Contrast this with the situation in 1997, when the seven Northeast states together comprised 25.70 per cent of the country’s total forest cover. Madhya Pradesh was the greenest state, with forests covering 20.68 per cent of its area. Arunachal Pradesh, at 10.80 per cent, was second.Experts cite three reasons for the increase in forest cover: success of the Joint Forest Management programme which was implemented in 22 states, natural regeneration of mangroves and large block plantations. However, scientists warn the increase may also partially be because of greater accuracy in the method of measuring forest cover.Instead of laborious field surveys, Digital Image Processing (DIP) using satellite data provided by the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA), Hyderabad, is used in all states now. In 1999, it was only possible to use the technology in 11 states.‘‘The data that we generate now will be the baseline data for years to come,’’ said J.K. Rawat, director of the Forest Survey of India. Since the earlier records were not so finetuned, a comparison of the corresponding figures for previous years was not quite accurate. ‘‘Earlier, only the outer boundaries were captured, now even smaller patches are accounted for,’’ added Rawat.Besides forest cover, even tree cover is accounted for by the sophisticated DIP technology. In the 2001 report, the scattered trees in 10,000 villages as well as the trees in kitchen gardens and streets were measured.Critics argue that there should be a way to measure whether natural forests are being retained or not. ‘‘In our present system of calculation, there is no way of knowing whether plantations are covering up for natural forests,’’ said Prakash Rao, head of the forestry division in Worldwide Fund for Nature.
