{"id":5850,"date":"2020-01-23T15:26:19","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T09:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=5850"},"modified":"2020-01-23T15:26:19","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T09:56:19","slug":"global-warming-forest-plantation-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/global-warming-forest-plantation-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Warming: Forest Plantation at risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><strong>Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Environment: Climate Change: Global Warming<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Foresta.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5852\" src=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Foresta.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"511\" srcset=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Foresta.jpg 960w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Foresta-150x80.jpg 150w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Foresta-300x160.jpg 300w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Foresta-768x409.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Context:<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>India has succeeded in reducing deforestation to some extent through an effective Forest Conservation Act and large-scale afforestation programmes, compared with other forest-rich tropical countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.<br \/>\n\u2022 Without the Forest Conservation Act and its reasonably effective implementation, India would have lost significant extent of forest area.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><em><strong>Forest coverage scenarios in India:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>India has also been implementing significant scale afforestation, though the rates of afforestation have declined recently, compared with the earlier decades.<br \/>\n\u2022 Agro-forestry, involving raising fruit tree plantations and commercial plantations of eucalyptus, casuarina, teak, poplar, etc.,<br \/>\n\u2022 That have been raised by farmers for commercial purposes, which have potentially reduced pressure on natural forests.<br \/>\n\u2022 According to the latest biennial State of Forest Report of the Forest Survey of India (FSI), area under forests has been increasing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Forest-types-of-India-Champion-and-Seth-1968-Biogeographical-digital-map-readily.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5853\" src=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Forest-types-of-India-Champion-and-Seth-1968-Biogeographical-digital-map-readily.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"850\" height=\"995\" srcset=\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Forest-types-of-India-Champion-and-Seth-1968-Biogeographical-digital-map-readily.png 850w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Forest-types-of-India-Champion-and-Seth-1968-Biogeographical-digital-map-readily-128x150.png 128w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Forest-types-of-India-Champion-and-Seth-1968-Biogeographical-digital-map-readily-256x300.png 256w, https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Forest-types-of-India-Champion-and-Seth-1968-Biogeographical-digital-map-readily-768x899.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><em><strong>Definition of forest:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Given the definition of forest used by FSI, which is generally consistent with international norms.<br \/>\n\u2022 It is not clear what percentage of increase in forest area is due to changes in natural forests (generally rich in biodiversity), what percentage is due to fast growing commercial plantations (of poplar, eucalyptus, etc.,) and what percentage is contributed by horticultural or fruit orchards of mango, coconut, cashew, areca nut, coffee and urban parks.<br \/>\n\u2022 What will be of most concern to forest and biodiversity conservation is to understand the status of natural forest and biodiversity.<br \/>\n\u2022 India can still use the same definition of forests, but must estimate and report the area under natural forests and other forest plantation categories.<br \/>\n\u2022 We need to define \u2018natural forests\u2019 first. Further, this would involve additional staff time and resources for large-scale ground truthing for baseline mapping of natural forests, which may not be available.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ff0000;\"><em><strong>Issues related to climate change:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Another issue of great concern is climate change and its impact on forests, commercial plantations, fruit gardens and biodiversity.<br \/>\n\u2022 The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports have repeatedly concluded that climate change will lead to large-scale loss of biodiversity, before the end of the current century or even earlier.<br \/>\n\u2022 Preliminary modelling studies by Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have shown that about 20% of forests will be impacted by climate change, which means that existing forest biodiversity and its structure and composition will not be able to adapt to the new climate and there could be mortality or forest dieback.<br \/>\n\u2022 Warming, drought and El Ni\u00f1o will lead to increased forest fires, and may even be favourable to forest pests.<br \/>\n\u2022 Unfortunately, the models currently in use for assessing the impact of climate change are not suitable for the complex and highly diverse forest types that exist in India.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Way ahead:<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Given that global warming will continue, India will have to brace itself to adapt to the impending impacts.<br \/>\n\u2022 In India, there is very limited research on climate change and its impacts on forests, putting our famed biodiversity-rich country status under threat.<br \/>\n\u2022 We need to realistically assess, monitor and model climate change and its impacts and be prepared to adapt to impending climate change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Environment: Climate Change: Global Warming Context: India has succeeded in reducing deforestation to some extent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,42],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-5850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-general-studies-iii-technology-economic-development-bio-diversity-environment-security-and-disaster-management","tag-union-public-service-commission-upsc"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5854,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5850\/revisions\/5854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}