TS govt adopting innovative, inclusive green practices

The recent devastating spread of pandemics coupled with biodiversity loss and climate change has reminded mankind to introspect its broken linkages with nature. The physical and mental well-being and capacity to counter the climate change challenges is therefore closely associated with the health of nature

As per the 2011 census, though the urban population of Telangana is 1.36 crore (38.9 per cent) it has grown by 38.12 per cent in comparison to the rural population growth of 2.13 per cent indicating the prevalence of very high rural-to-urban migration. An increase in the number of panchayats in the state from 8846 (2014) to 12768 (2021) is also testimony to this rapid pace of urbanisation. Coupled with burgeoning needs of development and individual greed, this has same time resulted in depletion and degradation of natural resources like tree cover, water bodies, community land etc at a greater pace.

For a civilised society, protecting nature either by preventing it from being destroyed or by way of bringing it back to cities and towns is the need of the hour for overall sustainability. This has necessitated the need of exploring various mechanisms to manage existing nature and also to replenish the damaged environmental resources.

As climate change is one of the major drivers of degradation of natural resources, environmentalists and foresters advocate tree planting as well as rejuvenation approaches as low-cost, easy to adopt and a high-impact intervention to restore nature and rejuvenate degraded forests and biodiversity and sequester carbon as well.

Acknowledging the multifarious role of environmental conservation including the green cover, Telangana Government launched Telangana Ku Haritha Haram (Green Garland to Telangana) in 2015 as one of the flagship programmes. The main object of the programme was bringing green cover from 24 per cent to 33 per cent duly formulating strategies to tackle the challenges of environmental conservation and protection with the participation of all active stakeholders.

As creating green space outside notified forest area warrants active participation of people for the success of environmental conservation, an enabling environment was created by the state of Telangana for the first time by bringing historic amendments to existing Panchayat and Municipal acts. These policy changes ensured active roles and responsibilities among panchayats and municipalities for planting and protection of trees, their survival (85 per cent) and provision for the green fund thus reflecting strong political will with care and concern for the much-neglected sector of the environment.

The recently adopted approach of integrated development of villages and urban areas of the state under the banner of Palle Pragathi (Village Development ) and Pattana Pragathi (Town Development ) respectively now has become an excellent platform to fulfil the much-needed demand of environmental conservation including tree planting as one of the major components.

The core concept behind this inclusive approach of Palle Pragathi and Pattana Pragathi is to take up the developmental activities in the areas of health, sanitation, waste management, energy conservation, community infrastructure, environmental conservation including tree planting and environmental awareness duly involving all stakeholders for effective participation.

To increase green cover in all 12769  gram panchayats of the state, mini-park–cum-forests (Prukriti Vanams) are being developed in each village depending upon the availability of lands to ensure the green cover availability for villagers. Besides planting trees in blanks lands various institutions like schools, colleges, government offices, houses of individuals including agricultural lands are being taken up for planting.

Adding more strength to the ongoing mission of increasing greenery in villages, the government has recently decided to develop Bruhat Palle Prikriti Vanam (BPPV) in all the 540 mandals of the state. Spreading over nearly 10 acres of land, the major activity under Brihad Palle Prukriti Vanam is to take up tree planting under Yadadri Model (Modified Miyawaki method).

One of the major environmental concerns in the urbanized world is the degraded environmental conditions affecting the health and psychological well being of citizens which are getting impaired day by day. To meet this challenge of degrading the environment, the Government has identified 109 locations across the state for developing urban parks covering 30377 hectares.

Fulfilling the long term goals of climate resilience and ecosystem services to citizens, 53 urban parks are completed and opened for the public. The remaining 56 urban parks are getting much focus for their development and priority under the ongoing “Pattana Pragathi” programme. Ultimately with these interventions, these urban parks are turning into excellent nature-based solutions for counteracting the challenges of climate change and other benefits to the citizen. The participation of active stakeholders under the Pattana Pragathi is helping to bring much-needed resiliency and sustainability to our cities.

The specific approaches and interventions of the government are generating opportunities for the urban and village communities not only to develop green spaces but also to protect and maintain the natural environment of the local area. Further various initiatives in the area of health, sanitation and employment generation under integrated manner are helping the communities to connect with nature and assisting them to fulfill a range of social, psychological, economic and environmental benefits.

The innovative and inclusive approaches of Palle Pragathi and Pattana Pragathi are bringing the development and the environment together to ensure a balanced and sustainable model of village and urban development which is worth emulating the model of development of the Telangana government. It is expected that this model of partnership with people will usher in a new era of equitable socio-economic development with environmental conservation for the benefits of all including posterity.

This article was appeared in The Hans India dated 11th July 2021 at the following link 

https://epaper.thehansindia.com/Home/ArticleView?eid=3&edate=11/07/2021&pgid=40525

Forests facing a double whammy

 

Forests are considered the best solutions for sequestering carbon and also acts as a stabilising force for the climate by regulating ecosystems, protect biodiversity, maintain the carbon cycle and support livelihood. Acting two-fold in climate change, forests act as a cause and also a solution for greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation and forest degradation contribute to nearly half of the emissions coming from the land sector accounting for 25 % of the global emissions.

Deforestation and degradation of forests is considered a serious environmental challenge and the biggest threat to our planet especially in the developing countries having the problem of poverty.  Every year nearly  18.7 million hectares of forests are destructed globally for various anthropogenic considerations including developmental needs. As per one estimate, 5.7 million hectares of forest land in India have been used for non-forestry purposes since independence. While nearly 75% of forests are subjected to grazing, another 10 MHA is affected by encroachment thereby increasing the degradation of forests besides affecting their productivity and regenerative capacity. State of the World’s Forest Report  2020 estimates the loss of 420 million hectares of forest through conversion to other land uses since 1990 and the reduction of 178 million hectares of forests has decreased globally due to deforestation. The recently established origin of infectious zoonotic diseases like COVID-19 is also being linked to habitat loss due to degradation and deforestation.

The global recognition of forests as the most suitable and effective weapons to fight climate change was acknowledged during 2005 at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)  followed by the creation of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) a collaborative programme of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2008. REDD programme was followed by the Bonn Challenge, launched by Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN) in 2011 for restoring 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. The Paris Climate accord 2015 gave a big boost to forests when all countries’ committed to offsetting their carbon emissions from fossil-fuel use and other sources by planting or protecting forests. The recent decision of the United Nations to declare 2021-30 as the UN decade on Ecosystem Restoration and targeting nearly 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 for restoration is also a step ahead to acknowledge the importance and role of forests. . Under the Paris agreement, India has pledged to increase its forests by 95 million hectares by 2030 and committed to restoring 26 million hectares degraded land by 2030.

The most intriguing part of forests degradation is that while on one side the forest degradation and deforestation are responsible for climate change but on the other side the consequences of climate change also impair the growth and survival of existing forests and contribute to their degradation. Global warming not only makes forests difficult to adapt to but also exposes them to other disturbances like floods, droughts, wildfires and insect damage and gets further compounded by uncontrolled land-use changes, unsustainable exploitation, pollutions and fragmentation of habitats. Further, an increase of global average temperature from 1.5 to 2.5 °C is likely to cause the risk of extinction of 20 to 30% of plant and animal species. The forests also face the problem of depletion of the water table due to unsustainable extraction of water which gets aggravated by droughts and degraded conditions of the forest. Other repercussions of climate change are changes in the climatic, edaphic and environmental conditions thereby negatively affecting the survival and emergence of forests. Water scarcity not only encourages conditions to enhance the spread of fires but also decreases the resilience of groundwater-dependent ecosystems.

One of the notable approaches to address the problems of degradation and deforestation is the Nature-based Solutions( NbS) of IUCN. Defined as actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems, the NBS approach addresses the societal challenges effectively and adaptively for human well-being and biodiversity benefits. Another approach to reverse deforestation and degradation is FLRM (Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism). Established by FAO in 2014, FLRM includes actions to strengthen the resilience and ecological integrity of landscapes with the participation of local communities. Current strategies and initiatives both at global and national levels are now strongly advocating these approaches to counter the challenge of degradation of forests.

Most of the initiatives to counter these challenges especially climate change have been so far limited to afforestation or tree planting being a mitigation alternative. However, a cursory evaluation of these programmes does not portray a very satisfactory picture mainly because of lack of seriousness and enabling policy and financial support with adequate provision to take care of backward and forward linkages essential for the establishment or survival of these plantations. Similar is the fate of approaches meant to counter the degradation like NbS and FLRM. In the absence of an effective policy initiative, enabling the atmosphere with the required institutional and legal framework with assured financing provisions, the action plans or policy declarations of the Countries are not able to yield considerable results. Though the mitigation measures for reducing emissions using forests are more economical than other mechanisms, one policy brief of the Centre for Science and Environment  (CSE) estimates the cost to meet the REDD+ interventions between the US $17 and $28 billion per year to reduce global emissions from deforestation by 50 per cent for developing countries which makes it highly cost-sensitive and  more challenging to put into practice.

There is no denial in the fact that degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution and other climate change-induced problems are not only environmental problems, they are also social and economic problems. Climate change and degradation being closely interlinked with poverty also contribute to making a vicious circle for the environmental crisis thereby pose a complex yet serious challenge especially for developing countries including India. This warrants formulation of integrated and inclusive solutions with strong political will having pro-poor and gender-sensitive priorities, commitment, strong policy support, enabling institutional and committed finances. Initiation and implementation of such mechanisms can only help to break the nexus between degradation and climate change for achieving effective and sustainability just environmental results. In the absence of such timely initiatives and priorities, the forests across the world will continue to face the double whammy of degradation and climate change and may further reach a stage from where their restoration and rejuvenation may become very difficult if not impossible.

(Views are personal).

This article also has been appeared in Telangana Today and can be viewed at the following link.

https://epaper.telanganatoday.com/Home/Index?date=05/07/2021&eid=1&pid=33639

Forest fires: Good servant but bad master

Come December and the foresters of Indian states gear up to manage annual forest fires, which cause enormous damages to both flora and fauna and are among the major challenges for the survival and growth of forests and wildlife. Considered a good servant and a bad master, these fires are known to be beneficial for the environment when managed under proper supervision and controlled conditions. However, of late, ever-increasing anthropogenic factors, along with global warming consequences, have been influencing these underlying conditions, affecting the frequency and extent of forest fires enormously. So much so, that they have become serious threats not only to forests and wildlife but also to the already alarming state of climate change at a global level. 

The excessive droughts, resulting in changes in depleted soil moisture, are not only influencing the growth of existing forests but also enhancing the aridity of fuel (leaves, twigs and litter) and soil, thereby making them highly prone to fires. In the past, there have been repeated fire incidences in Uttarakhand, which are mainly attributed to the presence of highly inflammable pine needles, coupled with steep slopes. A few unusual incidences in Theni of Tamil Nadu and the Tiger reserve of Bandipur during February-March and this year's incidence of Simplipal Forests have drawn considerable attention of all. 

According to one study, the anthropogenic climate changes during 1984-2015 in the US contributed to an additional 4.2 million hectares (ha) of forest fire area, which is almost double the forest fire area expected in their absence. In another study, the scientists observed that, between 1979 and 2013, the parts of the globe having more combustible vegetation have witnessed a nearly 108.1 per cent increase of global burnable area from wildfire. Published in Nature, this study also found that the fire season has also increased by nearly 20 per cent in all the continents except Australia during that period. The unabating hotter and drier weather, coupled with anthropogenic factors including our failure to manage natural resources on sustainable lines, has made climate change almost synonymous with a forest fire. And this is the reason for the nearly 13 per cent more fire alerts witnessed during 2020 in India, when compared to 2019. And, this trend is likely to get worse in the coming times, if we fail to address this problem in all seriousness. As observed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the chain of fires occurring especially in Australia and Amazon has worsened and subverted the conservation gains achieved through dedicated and long-lasting efforts undertaken. And the failure of the global communities to take action to control fire would be devastating for our entire planet and the people who live on it. Apart from impoverishing precious global resources, including biodiversity, the forests fires also endanger the health aspect of the people, due to pollution spreading across national borders. This has precipitated the urgency of addressing the challenges and negative impacts of forest fires by countries involving , governmental and non-governmental organisations, including Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), IUCN, etc, which are adopting their multi-pronged strategies and programmes with the involvement of various stallholders in this direction. 

Contrary to western countries, the forest fires in India, by and large, can be attributed to human-induced factors, among which encroachment and grazing are the most important. Whereas nearly 1.3 million ha of forests are under encroachment, another 78 per cent of forests are subjected to heavy grazing (World Bank, 2005). Having inter-linked the social, economic and political reasons, control of these two problems to protect the forests from these has become a difficult task for the foresters. 

The latest report of the Forest Survey of India estimates that nearly 21.4 per cent of forest cover in India is prone to forest fires, with north-eastern and central Indian parts being the most vulnerable. Gone are the days when a fire in the remote forest used to devastate precious flora and fauna for days together 

There have been considerable policy and regulatory interventions under Indian Forest Act, as well as in National Forest policy, seeking both punitive as well as participatory approaches to manage and control the fire in forests, besides adopting modern fire management approaches, which were reflected in subsequent schemes of the government. However, putting these approaches into practice could not somehow be achieved, mainly due to association and engagement of various factors with them and the lukewarm attitude towards the environment sector – both in policy formulation and prioritisation in budgetary allocation. Forest Survey of India (FSI), being the centre of excellence on forest fire management, as envisaged under National Action Plan on Forest Fire, has been continuously upgrading and introducing new techniques supported by state-of-the-art technological advancement in the area of forest fire prevention and management. While upgrading its existing system based on the use of MODIS data from 2017 onwards, the introduction of the recent version of Fire Alerts 3.0 and the use of SNPP-VIIRS satellite system have further improved its ability to provide fire alerts to the state forest departments, thereby helping them to control the fire more efficiently and timely, apart from avoiding the fire occurrences by issuing advanced pre-fire alerts. Gone are the days when a fire in the remote forest used to devastate precious flora and fauna for days together. With the advent of new technological interventions like fire alerts, advanced equipment, etc, the foresters are now in a better position to control these fires within a shortest possible time. The introduction of the Early Warning Alert System for Forest Fire started in 2016 and its recent adoption throughout the country has further improved the technological intervention for fire prevention. Based on parameters like forest density, humidity, temperature, rainfall, previous fire alerts, etc, this method of providing early fire warning alerts on weekly basis is proving highly effective in fire prevention as per the initial observations of FSI. 

Unlike developed countries, the survival of existing forests, including their protection from fire, is inter-linked to broader socio-economic and political issues in developing countries, including India. The dependence of nearly 100 million people for livelihood and other needs of fuelwood, non-timber forest products and subsistence of nearly 35 million tribal people on forests add enormous pressure on the forests, due to unsustainable extraction of these resources and further degrade them. During 2019, the forest area affected by the fire was reported to be 256,000 ha. The estimated economic costs of forest fires in India according to the World Bank (2018) is about Rs1,101 crore per year (2016 prices). This estimation is based on the assessment of loss of standing trees and does not take the ecological services, including carbon sequestration into account which can increase this loss by thousands of crore easily. Being in the concurrent list, both Central and state governments are required to take effective measures to address the challenges of fire damages to our forests. The fund allocation for fire management from the Central government is about Rs50 crore per year. States like Odisha, Chhattisgarh. MP, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttarakhand, UP, Rajasthan, etc, having sizeable funds under Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) are in a position to earmark fund towards fire management, but the states with lower allocation have the issue of fund availability to deal with, compounding the problem. The estimated economic costs of forest fires in India according to the World Bank (2018) is about Rs1,101 crore per year (2016 prices). This estimation is based on the assessment of loss of standing trees and does not take the ecological services, including carbon sequestration into account which can increase this loss by thousands of crore easily. Knowing well that 90-95 per cent of fires are man-made, the solution to this problem also lies with the people. 

The major strategies of fire management and control include prevention of fire and fire control, apart from the indirect approach of awareness and capacity building of various stakeholders for their participation in these strategies. Fire prevention and control strategies though being the best solutions to the problem suffer from the constraint of availability of man and money. Inadequacy of forest guards due to non-recruitment in many states and vast jurisdiction of forest beat (lowest administrative unit), ranging from 1,000 ha to 2,500 ha, hinder the availability of manpower at the crucial time of fire season. The engagement of forest officials, including forest guards, in other forestry and developmental activities also add insult to injury. Further, considering even 3.89 per cent forest cover (25,617 sq km) as extremely fire-prone, 6.01 per cent (39,500 sq km) as highly fire-prone and another 11.50 per cent (75,952 sq km) as fire-prone, as observed by Forest Survey of India (FSI), crucial and effective fire prevention measures like fire lines, controlled burning, placing fire watchers over such vast track, involve huge monetary implications. The inadequate fund allocation for these two strategies poses a major challenge and makes the strategies of fire management ineffective. 

The preventive approach of controlling forest fires, though crucial, is again linked to major anthropogenic factors like livelihood activities, encroachment, grazing, etc, to name a few, and warrant initiation of certain revolutionary yet harsh steps from the policymakers. However, due to the involvement of social and economic resentment, coupled with the political consequences of these initiatives, such measures have never been considered a practical solution to this problem. Further, for a welfare state having deep-rooted economic and social inequalities in rural areas and fringe forest communities having linkages with environmental degradation, any such regulatory and radical changes cannot be considered wise and thoughtful. Similar is the case of seeking the co-operation of the people in the prevention and control of forest fire, which is gradually diminishing mainly, due to lack of an effective model of community participation. To have a win-win situation for all stakeholders, the lacklustre attitude of people towards environmental protection, including forest and forest fires, have to change. 

For effective control over the recurring challenges of forest fires, there is a need to address this problem in an integrated manner, by involving a wide range of stakeholders/communities, adopting multi-pronged strategies and controlling the degradation of forests and climate change with policy interventions and adequate resources. We should also remember that, unless we do away with innovative and enterprising ways of subverting environmental obligations due to priority of development over the environment, this camouflage will further abate the degradation of the environment and will be manifested in the forms of climate change, flood and forest fires. In the absence of this, any efforts of fire control with no serious and committed backing of policy interventions will just be like beating around the bushes.

Originally appeared in 

https://businessindia.co/magazine/forest-fires-good-servant-but-bad-master