Environment

KEY POINTS

India’s Bonn Challenge

·         Restore 13 million hectares (Mha) of degraded land by 2020 and an additional 8 Mha by 2030.

India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)

·         It pledged to sequester 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent additionally by 2030 through enhanced tree cover.

·         To achieve this, India will need to extend tree cover on at least 28-34 million hectares, outside of the existing forest cover.

Issue

·         States working to achieve these commitments shows over-reliance on plantations.

·         Neither the Bonn Challenge nor the NDCs are about large-scale plantations alone.

·         The Bonn Challenge, for instance, lays emphasis on landscape approaches.

·         The NDC lays emphasis on adaptation to climate change through a strengthened flow of benefits to local communities.

·         Large-scale plantation drives, which often do not lay stress on species selection, the quality of planting materials, nor recognise tenure and resource rights, do not really achieve the goals.

Tree-based programmes as an alternative

·         Success factor in large-scale tree-based programmes is security of tenure and land rights.

·         Securing tenure over forests has been established as a cost-effective way of achieving climate sequestration.

·         Agro-forestry models that combine different trees that provide timber, fruits, fodder, fuel and fertilizers with food crops will satisfy both climatic and as well as community needs.

·         Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) systems where farmers protect and manage the growth of trees and shrubs that regenerate naturally in their fields can deliver several economic and ecosystem benefits.

·         Performance monitoring system to quantify tree survival rates and the benefits to communities will improve benefits even more.

·         Scientific evidence-based methodology to determine the right type of tree-based interventions most suitable to a certain land use will yield even better results.

·         E.g. Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM)

·         In India, this tool is being piloted in Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.

India has been committed to many progressive steps towards climate change mitigation. One of them is tree based programmes.

The other models for the need of the hour to achieve our goal towards climate change commitment are as follows:

1.Model which benfits the local and tribes.eg. Brazil

2.Selection of plant seeds for a particular landscape as most of the seeds became a backfire as they are invasive.

3.Approach which should also include the conservation of biodiversity species as the wild species are a part of ecosystem which holds their chain and helping us to commited towards our goal.

4.Water supply to the planted area should be undisturbed.

5.Security tenure and land rights of owners are also other important factors have to be incorporated with the regular approaches.eg.Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.

These are some of the steps we can use to stick to our goal for a long term basis which is having the capability of yielding the results.