Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

While the world is treading on new paths and travelling in new corners of the Earth while celebrating the onset of 2022 and enjoying a moment in the hills, seashore, forest or desert, they must be able to relate why the environment needs to be preserved at best.

But that is not the actual story.

While the country boasted of increasing its forest cover continuously, by 24.56 per cent of the geographical area of the country this year, 2.8 million hectares of Indian land has been burned alone in 2021 as per Global Forest Watch organization.

This is abnormally high since 2001.

In less than two decades from 2002 to 2020, the country lost 349 kha (thousand hectares) of its humid forests that is equivalent to 19% of the total tree cover loss. This happened while Coronavirus raged over news headlines.

Approximately 38.5 Kha of tropical forest vanished in India between 2019 and 2020 making up around 14 per cent loss.

In the same period, 1.93Mha of tree cover was lost or a staggering 5 percent decrease since 2000 yielding 951 Mt of carbon emissions.

Between 2001 and 2020, 742 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere.

Although it was enticing to find how 3.8% of tree cover loss could occur in areas also battling deforestation.

But has Deforestation only groped India?

“In 2010, the world had 3.92 Global Hectare (Gha) of tree cover, extending over 30 per cent of its land area. In 2020, it lost 25.8 Mha of tree cover,” explains a leading Institute that trails Climate.

Nearly 31% of the Earth’s total land area currently constitutes Forests, that spans over 15.68 million square miles (40.6 million km²).

But in last thirty years, more than 4% (685,300 square miles) of it has been lost that is equal to half the size of India. However, this fall has slowed down.

This can be understood through a look between 1990 to 2000 when an average of 30,116 square miles were lost, as compared to a period from 2010 to 2020 that lost 18,146 square miles of forest.

This depicts a fall of around 40% in the rate of Deforestation.

Why do we need to look out for our Forests?

Amongst the greatest carbon capture resources or sinks in the world, Forests have played a key role in sequestration and reduction of available carbon in atmosphere.

This role is in addition to being the savior of wildlife habitats and livelihoods for those directly depending on its resources.

How is there a looming danger on Forest Resources?

While we hail the forests and heavy tree cover, deforestation is threatening the very natural infrastructure we cherish.

Any harm to these tends to release excessive carbon into the atmosphere, smothering biodiversity, unleashing a string of Pandemics and in turn make our surroundings even more susceptible to disasters.

If we are to believe the worldly estimations, nearly 30% of the world’s annual carbon emissions are absorbed by forests, which have become the greatest and crucial carbon sink on land.

How often we forget the way our forests protect and serve the planet by becoming soldiers against extreme weather, which will be common in near future due to climate change.

When curbing deforestation becomes difficult, planting trees become easy.

From ensuring rainfall security, to curbing erosion and natural droughts in wet and dry seasons respectively, along with landslides.

It has been calculated that every US dollar invested in ecosystem restoration can offer up to $30 benefits in return, that can prove as an effective way to reduce challenges and inherent costs involved with achieving the climate and environmental protection goals.

This lies apart from the ecosystem services it provides by harboring various species of the world, sustaining the endemic ones and the 70 million indigenous people.

A huge population of 1.6 billion people have their livelihoods thriving through forests of the world every day.

Has the mapping of Deforestation become indispensable?

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has collated the data related to net forest change, by respective country and region over the past 30 years that can help understand and curb the trend.

Deforestation in the long run leads to desertification as it is caused by removal of trees responsible for holding and clutching the soil together using extended roots. Also, it disturbs a delicate balance of nutrients and moisture in soil.

Removal of trees leaves the soil exposed to wind and other elements blowing away the top soil, either dried out or washed away by rain etc.

Climate change is only making the dual threat i.e., deforestation and desertification, even worse.

Is there a positive light too coming from dark canopy?

Despite the 2020 registering a sharp increase in forest cover loss, a few signs about forest regrowth have also come to fore.

According to a recent study, it has been found that previously deforested land can regain its fertility in a brief period of ten years if taken care of.

With this in tandem, several layers of plants, trees, and even species can recover in around 25-60 years.

Not everything seems lost, if concerted efforts are made.

But what is best lies in the fact that these regrown “secondary forests” can probably absorb more carbon dioxide than their “primary” counterparts.

If this is true, there is a hope of global ecosystem reforestation (to be served in this decade) which can ultimately absorb more emissions than currently considered possible.

But curbing deforestation and promoting reforestation requires a Universal action that has been proposed to stabilize the climate, decelerate its rapid change and preserve the serene environment, risked now, saving the lives of billions of animals and people.

What is REDD and REDD+ and how are they helping Earth?

REDD — ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation’ moots an idea to offer incentive for changing the way we use our forest resources currently.

That is to curb global CO2 emissions in such a way that prevents future forest loss or degradation of any sort. This can include carbon trading or forest management remittances etc.

REDD’s idea was simple: Funds and rewards are allotted for good forest management in developing countries that will anyhow make poor forest management practices like mining, logging, overgrazing to become less profitable as compared to their sustainable alternatives.

These funds can be sourced from carbon trading, offset mechanisms that calls for the industrialized nations to offset their own industrial emissions through payments made as carbon credits to developing countries.

These monetary resources are credited in lieu of the forests, carbon sinks or any other natural asset possessed by the developing country and helps enable them to conserve or sustainably use their limited resource.

REDD+ is a further step in this legacy.

It does not only talk of conservation but an enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries, by facilitating the reduction of human footprint on Nature and forests through National policies in developing countries.

REDD+ has also been given due space under Article 5 of the Paris Agreement, wherein the parties those have signed the famous document may also implement REDD+ activities.

Thus Warsaw Framework for REDD+ (WFR) commits the highest level of encouragement for climate actions in the forest sector.

This may compose capacity-building, technology assistance, climate model demonstration activities or the result-based finance.

As per 2020 estimates, the REDD+ activities have resulted in global emission reductions of 6.3 billion t CO2 eq.

While there are globally running changes those are beginning to curb deforestation, there is always something that can be achieved on the individual level.

Be it adapting to the green lifestyle or starting a green, clean business that evades or even negates deforestation, practice restraint or promote eco-forestry i.e. felling of selected trees to cause least possible damage to the area, promoting the community reserves and sacred groves by attaching the value of nature with belief.

Of all things impossible, the human mind can make it work for we know that we don’t need a new sunrise to wake from ignorance, all we need is a new mindset.

By Alaina Ali Beg

I am a lover of all arts and therefore can dream myself in all places where the World takes me. I am an avid animal lover and firmly believes that Nature is the true sorcerer.

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