10/10/2019 - Environment

KEY POINTS

·        India is reportedly planning to undertake a vast reforestation exercise along the Aravalli hill range that stretches from the Ridge of Delhi to Banaskantha in Gujarat.

·        What the government appears to have in mind is a “green wall of India", a 1,400km-long and 5km-wide green corridor all the way from Panipat in Haryana to Porbandar in Gujarat.

·        It would be modelled on the so-called Great Green Wall of Africa that was envisioned to run from Djibouti in the continent’s east to Senegal in its west.

·        The Aravalli range, which separates western India’s Thar desert from the relatively green plains to its east, has lost so much green cover that it is losing its ability to act as a natural barrier against the heat and dust that blows in from the west.

·        The greener it remains, say ecologists, the less likely that the desert will expand into the rest of the Indian landmass.

·        Without top-level intervention in favour of vegetation, environmentalists warn, the Thar desert’s expansion could even threaten the “granary of India"—the fertile belts of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and the Malwa region.

·        If this is so, then the proposed project could insure the country against a potential crisis of food insufficiency in the decades ahead.

·        The country aims to restore 26 million hectares to health by 2030. While the greening of the Aravalli corridor could help us reach that goal, much more needs to be done.

·        Green wall will act as barrier for dust from west and check eastward march of Thar desert.

·        It will check desertification by restoring the degraded land through massive afforestation.

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