India’s disputed compensatory afforestation policy at odds with new IPCC report Premium

The IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report has found that reducing the conversion of natural ecosystems has more climate-mitigating potential than wind power, afforestation, or ecosystem restoration.

Not degrading existing ecosystems in the first place will do more to lower the impact of the climate crisis than restoring ecosystems that have been destroyed – a finding that speaks to an increasingly contested policy in India that has allowed forests in one part of the country to be cut down and ‘replaced’ with those elsewhere.

The finding originates in the Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a U.N. expert body that determines the global scientific consensus on the consequences of climate change. The report was released on March 20.

“It is extremely significant that the preservation of natural ecosystems is being recognised as an important means to mitigate climate change,” conservation biologist Neha Sinha said in an email. “Environment impact assessments should now include climate costs.”

Afforestation is part of India’s climate pledges: the government has committed to adding “an additional (cumulative) carbon sink of 2.5-3 GtCO2e through additional forest and tree cover by 2030”. ‘GtCO2e’ stands for gigatonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent.

Afforestation is also codified in the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), a body created on the Supreme Court’s orders in 2002, chaired by the environment minister. According to the environment ministry, “CAMPA is meant to promote afforestation and regeneration activities as a way of compensating for forest land diverted to non-forest uses.”

When forest land is diverted to non-forest use, such as a dam or a mine, that land can longer provide its historical ecosystem services nor host biodiversity.

According to the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, the project proponent that wishes to divert the land must identify land elsewhere to afforest, and pay the land value and for the afforestation exercise. That land will thereafter be stewarded by the forest department.