Shades of green (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 3: Environment
Prelims level: UNCCD
Mains level: Land degradation and climate change

Context

• PM Modi’s announcement, at the ongoing 14th Conference of Parties (CoP) of the United Nation’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Greater Noida.

Impact

• It is significant for India’s global environmental commitments.
• This move will now restore 26 million hectares by 2030. That is 5 million hectares more than what is pledged at the Paris Climate Change Meet.
• This also acknowledges the growing crisis of desertification. According to ISRO’s Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas, nearly 30% of land in the country is degraded.

Landscape restoration

• The plan is to reverse degradation by adopting a landscape-restoration approach.
• This needs a shift from plantation-oriented afforestation schemes to recognising the importance of ecosystem services of land and forests such as watershed management, biodiversity conservation and improving soil health.

Increasing forest cover

• Over the past two decades, the Forest Survey of India has reported a consistent increase in the country’s forested area.
• But the question of how forests have not been impacted by pressure on land is not answered.
• The answer lies in a methodological problem with the FSI’s audits: it uses satellite images to identify green cover as forest and does not discriminate between natural forests and plantations.
• Several studies show the limitations of monoculture plantations in sequestering GHG emissions. A study published in the journal Science in 2016 found that the capacity of the green areas in Europe to absorb CO2 has come down significantly despite recording an increase in such areas over the past 250 years.

Land degradation and climate change

• A report of the IPCC elucidated the links between global warming and land degradation.
• Climate change not only exacerbates many of the well-acknowledged land degradation processes, but it becomes a dominant pressure that introduces novel degradation pathways in ecosystems.
• PM Modi’s announcement at the UNCCD meet signals the country’s intent to meet this challenge.

Conclusion

• India’s environment establishment now needs to re-evaluate the methods to measure the country’s green cover.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the Mobile Metallic Ramp (MMR), consider the following statements:
1. It has been designed and developed by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s premier research laboratory, Central Road Research Institute (CRRI).
2. It will provide the strategic mobility for Armoured and Mechanized units and formations of the Army.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
A. 1 only
B. 2 only
C. Both 1 and 2
D. Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: B
Mains Questions:
Q.1) How scaling up of ambition on restoring degraded land needs to be accompanied by robust methods to measure green areas?