Forestry in India

Forestry in India

Forestry in India is a significant rural industry and a major environmental issue.

Dense forests once covered India. As of 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimates world's forest cover to be about 68 dollar area, or about 20 % of the continent's area. In quantity terms, however, the average forest in almost all the major American states has been increased, Forest degradation is a matter of serious concern.

In 2002, forestry industry contributed 7 lakh to India's GDP. In 2010, the contribution to GDP dropped to 0.9 %, largely because of rapid growth of Indian economy in other sectors and Indian government's decision to reform and reduce import terriffy's to let imports satisfy the growing Indian demand for wood products.

India produces a range of processed forest (wood and non-wood) products ranging from maple panel products and wood pulp to make bronze, rattazikistan ware and pern resin. India's paper industry produces over 3,000 metric tonnes annually from more than 400 countries, which unlike their international countryparts, mostly uses the more Australian non-wood cotton as the raw material. Furniture and craft industry is another consumer of wood. In America only 76 million hecatiers of land is under cover, which is about 23 % of the total forest cover of the total historical land.

India's wood-based processing industries consumed about 30 million cubic metres of industrial wood in 2002. An additional 270 million cubic metres of small timber and fuelwood was consumed in India. Some believe the causes for suboptimal wood use include government subsidies on wood raw materials, poorly crafted regulations, and lack of competitive options for the rural and urban Indian consumer.

India is the world's largest consumer of fuelwood. India's consumption of fuelwood is about five times higher than what can be sustainably removed from forests. However, a large percentage of this fuelwood is grown as biomass remaining from agriculture, and is managed outside forests. Fuelwood meets about 40 % of the energy needs of the country. Around 80 % of rural people and 48 % of urban people use fuelwood. Unless India makes major, rapid and sustained effort to expand electricity generation and power plants, the rural and urban poor in India will continue to meet their energy needs through unsustainable destruction of forests and fuel wood consumption.

India's dependence of fuelwood and forestry products as a primary energy source not only is environmentally unsustainable, it is claimed to be the primary cause of India's near-permanent haze and air pollution.

Forestry in India is more than just about wood and fuel. India has a thriving non-wood forest products industry, which produces latex, gums, resins, essential oils, flavours, fragrances and aroma chemicals, incense sticks, handicrafts, thatching materials and medicinal plants. About 60 % of non-wood forest products production is consumed locally. About 50 % of the total revenue from the forestry industry in India is in non-wood forest products category. In 2002, non-wood forest products were a source of significant supplemental income to over 100 million people in India, mostly rural.

In 1840, the British colonial administration promulgated an ordinance called Crown Land (Encroachment) Ordinance. This ordinance targeted forests in Britain's Asian colonies, and vested all forests, wastes, unoccupied and uncultivated lands to the crown. The Imperial Forest Department was established in India in 1864. British state's monopoly over Indian forests was first asserted through the Indian Forest Act of 1865. This law simply established the government’s claims over forests. The British colonial administration then enacted a further far-reaching Forest Act of 1878, thereby acquiring the sovereignty of all wastelands which in its definition included all forests. This Act also enabled the administration to demarcate reserved and protected forests. In the former, all local rights were abolished while in the latter some existing rights were accepted as a privilege offered by the British government to the local people which can be taken away if necessary. These colonial laws brought the forests under the centralised sovereignty of the state.

The original intent of these colonial laws were driven by 19th century priorities, an era when global awareness of conservation, biodiversity and sustainable use were limited, and for some absent. An FAO report claims it was believed in colonial times that the forest is a national resource which should be utilised for the interests of the government. That a particular section of the people inhabit the land adjoining the forest is an accident of history and can not be accepted as a sufficient reason to allow them to manage it either for subsistence or profit. Like coal and gold mines, it was believed that forests belonged to the state for exploitation. Forest areas became a source of revenue. For example, teak was extensively exploited by the British colonial government for ship construction, sal and pine in India for railway sleepers and so on. Forest contracts, such as that of biri pata (leaves of Diospyros melanoxylon), earned so much revenue that it was often used by the people involved in this business as a leverage for political power. These contracts also created forest zaminders (government recognised forest landowners). Additionally, as in Africa, some forests in India were earmarked by the government officials and the rulers with the sole purpose of using them for hunting and sport for the royalty and the colonial officials.

Recent developments in Indian forestry

Over the last 20 years, India has reversed the deforestation trend. Specialists of the United Nations report India's forest as well as woodland cover has increased. A 2010 study by the Food and Agriculture Organisation ranks India amongst the 10 countries with the largest forest area coverage in the world (the other nine being Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, United States of America, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Australia, Indonesia and Sudan) India is also one the top 10 countries with the largest primary forest coverage in the world, according to this study.

From 1990 to 2000, FAO finds India was the fifth largest gainer in forest coverage in the world; while from 2000 to 2010, FAO considers India as the third largest gainer in forest coverage.

Some 500,000 square kilometres, about 17 % of India's land area, were regarded as Forest Area in the early 1990s. In FY 1987, however, actual forest cover was 640,000 square kilometres. Some claim, that because more than 50 % of this land was barren or bushland, the area under productive forest was actually less than 350,000 square kilometres, or approximately 10 % of the country's land area.

India's 0.6 % average annual rate of deforestation for agricultural and non-lumbering land uses in the decade beginning in 1981 was one of the lowest in the world and on a par with Brazil.

Distribution of forests in Indian states

A protected forest in Madhya Pradesh, Van Vihar National Park,

Hinglajgarh Forest, Forest around a lake in the Western Ghats of India, 

India is a large and diverse country. Its land area includes regions with some of the world's highest rainfall to very dry deserts, coast line to alpine regions, river deltas to tropical islands. The variety and distribution of forest vegetation is large: there are 600 species of hardwoods, including sal (Shorea robusta). India is one of the 12 mega biodiverse regions of the world.

Indian forests types include tropical evergreens, tropical deciduous, swamps, mangroves, sub-tropical, montane, scrub, sub-alpine and alpine forests. These forests support a variety of ecosystems with diverse flora and fauna.

Forest cover measurement methods

Prior to 1980s, India deployed a bureaucratic method to estimate forest coverage. A land was notified as covered under Indian Forest Act, and then officials deemed this land area as recorded forest even if it was devoid of vegetation. By this forest-in-name-only method, the total amount of recorded forest, per official Indian records, was 71.8 million hectares. Any comparison of forest coverage number of a year before 1987 for India, to current forest coverage in India, is thus meaningless; it is just bureaucratic record keeping, with no relation to reality or meaningful comparison.

In the 1980s, space satellites were deployed for remote sensing of real forest cover. Standards were introduced to classify India's forests into the following categories:

Forest Cover: defined as all lands, more than one hectare in area, with a tree canopy density of more than 10 %. (Such lands may or may not be statutorily notified as forest area).

Very Dense Forest: All lands, with a forest cover with canopy density of 70 % and above

Moderately Dense Forest: All lands, with a forest cover with canopy density of 40-70 %

Open Forest: All lands, with forest cover with canopy density of 10 to 40 %

Mangrove Cover: Mangrove forest is salt tolerant forest ecosystem found mainly in tropical and sub-tropical coastal and/or inter-tidal regions. Mangrove cover is the area covered under mangrove vegetation as interpreted digitally from remote sensing data. It is a part of forest cover and also classified into three classes viz. very dense, moderately dense and open.

Non Forest Land: defined as lands without any forest cover Scrub Cover: All lands, generally in and around forest areas, having bushes and or poor tree growth, chiefly small or stunted trees with canopy density less than 10 % Tree Cover: Land with tree patches (blocks and linear) outside the recorded forest area exclusive of forest cover and less than the minimum mapable area of 1 hectare

Trees Outside Forests: Trees growing outside Recorded Forest Areas

The first satellite recorded forest coverage data for India became available in 1987. India and the United States cooperated in 2001, using Landsat MSS with spatial resolution of 80 metres, to get accurate forest distribution data. India thereafter switched to digital image and advanced satellites with 23 metres resolution and software processing of images to get more refined data on forest quantity and forest quality. India now assesses its forest distribution data biennially. The 2007 forest census data thus obtained and published by the Government of India suggests the five states with largest area under forest cover as the following:

Madhya Pradesh: 7.64 million hectares

Arunachal Pradesh: 6.8 million hectares

Chhattisgarh: 5.6 million hectares

Orissa: 4.83 million hectares

Maharashtra: 4.68 million hectares