Blog Post
Sunderam Saxena
As we move towards realizing the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047, there is an increasing demand for land to accommodate industries for manufacturing, mining rare earth minerals and producing hydroelectric power, etc. At the same time, India, like most other global participants in the climate action, has some crucial commitments towards sustainable development, wherein it needs to fulfill its Panchamrit goals of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2070, reducing carbon emission intensity, increasing its renewable energy capacity, etc. (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change [MoEFCC], 2022).
Further, under the Bonn Challenge, launched by the German government and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), India has committed to restoring 26 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by 2030 (Tambe et al., 2022; Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 2026b).
Safekeeping our forests and various kinds of naturally-evolved ecosystems is of utmost importance in sustaining our model of development. These landscapes help regulate water, protect soils, store carbon, provide habitat for a rich diversity of life, and support numerous indigenous communities (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], 2026). However, with ever increasing demand for land for industrial purposes and mining, etc., a direct threat looms over India’s natural landscapes.
l. India currently accounts for approximately 72 million hectares of forest area, moving up to 9th position globally in terms of total forest area as per Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA) 2025. We also continue to maintain 3rd position globally in terms of net annual forest area gain (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 2025).
Despite 97,050.30 hectares (ha) forests being diverted for non-forest purposes between 2020–21 and 2024–25 (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 2026a), the Forest Survey of India (FSI) maintains that our net forest cover has been increasing (Forest Survey of India, 2023). Owing to various afforestation initiatives, including compensatory afforestation, India has been reported to have brought 21.76 million hectares of land under restoration efforts as of June 2026 (Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, 2026b).
Compensatory afforestation derives from the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980, which stipulates that any diversion of forestland for development projects, or for other reasons, will be subject to the approval of the Government of India. This approval is known as forest clearance, administered by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (Government of India, 1980).
However, various laws that stipulate or inform afforestation in India are ridden with challenges. First, as the need to develop our economy increases, forest clearances have started to becomealmost a default response. In the trade-off between environment and development, the latter wins. Forest clearance, which requires careful ecological and social scrutiny, often becomes a formality to facilitate development (Ghosh, 2017). As availability of land parcels for compensatory afforestation has proven to be an impediment for industrial project approvals, “land banks” are created to facilitate the process (Ghosh, 2017).
Further, site-specific afforestation plans have been found to showcase standardized, boilerplate text (for instance, a plan for Kalahandi district incorrectly referred to tribal communities from Keonjhar district, nearly 500 km away), raising questions about the extent of genuine ecological assessment (Valencia, 2019). This suggests that compensatory afforestation risks functioning less as a safeguard against forest loss and more as a mechanism for accommodating diversion.
Second, as forest area cover increases on paper, it becomes crucial to see how reflective it is of on ground reality. For this, we need to understand what the government means by ‘forest’. Notably, ‘forest’ is not defined in any Central Forest Act (Indian Forest Act, 1927, or the Forest
Conservation Act, 1980) or by the Government of India. As per the Forest Survey of India, “forest cover” refers to any region of land where the density of the tree canopy exceeds 10% and the area surpasses 1 hectare.
This is applicable regardless of land use, ownership, or tree species (Forest Survey of India, 2023; Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, 2023). This means that an ancient, naturally evolved and highly biodiverse forest could be cleared for mining and ‘compensated’ for with a plantation elsewhere.
In the Odisha cases documented by Valencia (2019), communities described teak plantations as providing limited livelihood benefits compared with natural forests. Such plantations may also comprise water-intensive species unsuited to local ecological conditions, support limited biodiversity, and fail to replicate the original forest’s functions, from sustaining wildlife habitats to regulating local water cycles. Consequently, an increase in forest cover on paper may not necessarily translate into the restoration of a comparable forest ecosystem on the ground (Tambe et al., 2022; Valencia, 2019).
Third, as per Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) guidelines, all forests having less than 40% crown density are categorised as ‘degraded’. However, natural open forest biomes such as grasslands, rocky plateau tops, shola grasslands, alpine meadows, marshy areas, deserts, ravines, wetlands, etc., are all ecologically vital and unique and should not be ‘forested’. Tree plantations do not always address the causes of degradation, and may be harming the naturally evolved and unique ecosystems instead of healing them (Tambe et al., 2022).
Therefore, the focus of the policy needs to shift to ‘restoration’, which may include afforestation but does not stay limited to it. Restoration strategies must be tailored to the nature and extent of ecological degradation rather than defaulting to tree planting. Best practices from Sikkim, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh illustrate the need for differentiated approaches, ranging from natural regeneration to assisted and reconstructive restoration. This requires a codified ‘mitigation hierarchy’ that prioritises avoiding ecological damage, minimising unavoidable impacts, restoring affected sites in situ, and resorting to biodiversity offsets only thereafter.
However, prevailing afforestation practices continue to reflect the legacy of commercial timber forestry, favouring fast growing, often non-native tree species over the restoration of diverse, naturally evolved ecosystems. Such plantations may increase tree cover without restoring ecological integrity, producing ecologically impoverished landscapes rather than functioning forests (Tambe et al., 2022).
Fourth, the ecological valuation of forests or landscapes designated for diversion for development projects is done through a method known as ‘Net Present Value’ (NPV), which calculates the monetary value of ecosystem services lost over a 50-year period, along with a variety of forest department endeavors, including additional afforestation and reforestation activities (Ghosh, 2017; Valencia, 2019). This raises some fundamental questions: can the value of nature be adequately captured in monetary terms, and should there be limits to such valuation exercises? The danger is that what is assigned a monetary value may increasingly be treated as something that can be compensated for, even when its ecological and cultural significance cannot be replicated.
It means that ‘x’ amount of evergreen wet forest will be equal to ‘y’ amount of scrub forest or ‘z’ amount of monoculture plantation. When a forest is cleared for a developmental project, its environmental services disappear no matter how scientifically valued. Money cannot recreate or reproduce these services (Ghosh, 2017).
Fifth, sites chosen for compensatory afforestation are often community-owned commons on which tribals/indigenous populations are dependent for their livelihoods and cultural practices (Ghosh, 2017; Valencia, 2019). The population of such forest-dwellers is reported to be around 250 million, with around 10-40% of forest dwellers’ livelihoods coming from common property resources (Valencia, 2019). Yet, administrative language may portray such lands as degraded by shifting cultivation, even though shifting cultivation can be regenerative in some contexts (Valencia, 2019).
There is also evidence that sometimes, the community forest rights (CFR) promised under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, are overlooked and ignored to facilitate afforestation activities (Ministry of Tribal Affairs, n.d.; Valencia, 2019). Policies around afforestation should be democratized with due consents and deliberations. A Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) review of 79 studies on landscape approaches revealed that out of all the reasons for the success of landscape approach projects, community management and engagement outranked reasons like money, technology and leadership/enforcement (Reed et al., 2017).
More importantly, restoration could employ millions of underemployed rural workers, particularly youth (Valencia, 2019). India’s ambitious climate agenda must be evaluated not only through hectares restored, carbon captured and profits generated, but also through its impact on people. The five concerns discussed above highlight how a narrow focus on tree cover, commercial plantations and monetary valuation can undermine ecological integrity, community rights and local livelihoods (Tambe et al., 2022; Valencia, 2019). When restoration fails to align with democratic, community-led approaches, those most vulnerable to climate change may also suffer from climate mitigation through dispossession, livelihood insecurity and criminalisation. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, India’s restoration efforts must be ambitious yet responsible.
Ultimately, restoration must go beyond compensating for lost forest cover to restoring ecological functions, protecting rights and revitalising rural livelihoods; otherwise, the very communities and landscapes that climate action seeks to protect risk becoming casualties of its implementation.
References
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2026). The state of the world’s forests 2026. https://www.fao.org/interactive/2026/state-of-the-worlds-forests/en/
Forest Survey of India. (2023). India state of forest report 2023. Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. https://fsi.nic.in/forest-report-2023
Ghosh, S. (2017). Compensatory afforestation: ‘Compensating’ loss of forests or disguising
forest offsets? Economic and Political Weekly, 52(38), 67–75.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26697755
Government of India. (1980). Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. (2022, February 3). India’s stand at COP 26. Press Information Bureau.
https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1795071&lang=2
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Ministry of Tribal Affairs. (n.d.). Forest Rights Act. Government of India.
https://tribal.nic.in/FRA.aspx
Reed, J., van Vianen, J., Barlow, J., & Sunderland, T. (2017). Have integrated landscape
approaches reconciled societal and environmental issues in the tropics? Land Use Policy,
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(2022). Compensatory afforestation policy in India: An analysis using an ecorestoration
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political-ecology-forest-restoration
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About the Author:
Sunderam Saxena holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Delhi and works as a researcher at the Public Policy Research Centre (PPRC), New Delhi. His research interests include environmental governance, climate policy, and sustainability, with a focus on India’s environmental and developmental challenges.
Disclaimer:
All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and not necessarily to the organization.
