A plan that is much more than just planting trees

The focus now is on ‘forest landscape restoration’, to regain ecological functionality and improve human welfare

Last month, about 100 women, employed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), were seen digging pits, planting trees and watering them in Nangal Khurd village, in Mansa district in Punjab, just in time for World Environment Day that is observed every year on June 5. Working alongside them were over 50 young people from a local club. The district administration was involved too. It was an example of community effort.

Let us move to this month. It is also time for Van Mahotsav, which literally means “celebrate the forest”. The history of Van Mahotsav Day goes back to July 1947, when it was first organised by the Punjabi botanist, M.S. Randhawa. Subsequently, in 1950, Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi, an environmentalist and Union Minister of Agriculture and Food, expanded its reach and national scope. In today’s world, forests need to be celebrated more than ever before. Simultaneously, more forests need to be created and restored. However, there is much debate about the efforts around tree planting. Is there a right way to do it? Are there dos and don’ts when it comes to mass tree-planting? Let us step back for the bigger picture.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), deforestation and forest degradation contribute around 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The total area occupied by primary forests in India has decreased by 3.6%.

Typically, governments have relied on afforestation and reforestation as a means of establishing trees on non-treed land. These strategies have now evolved. The focus is now on forest landscape restoration — the process of regaining ecological functionality and improving human welfare across deforested or degraded forest landscapes.

This approach keeps in mind multiple land uses and people’s needs in the short and long terms. Forest landscape restoration seeks to involve communities in the process of designing and executing mutually advantageous interventions for the upgradation of landscapes. Nearly two billion hectares of degraded land in the world (and 140 million hectares in India) have scope for potential restoration as forest land.

A crucial aspect of this process is to ensure the diversity of the species while planting trees. Natural forests with diverse native tree species are more efficient in sequestering carbon than monoculture tree plantations. Planting diverse species is also healthier for local communities and their livelihoods. An international study published earlier this year in the journal, Science, found that diversifying species in forest plantations has a positive impact on the quality of the forests.

In Punjab, for instance, the community is proactively planting native species such as Jhand ( Prosopis cineraria), Desi Kikar ( Acacia nilotica) and Pharwan ( Tamarix aphylla), which are resilient and acclimatised. And most of these saplings have a high survival rate of 90%, a vital requirement for sustainable reforestation activities.