Conservation in India
Conservation in India can be traced to the time of Ashoka, tracing to the Ashoka Pillar Edicts as one of the earliest conservation efforts in the world. Conservation generally refers to the act of carefully and efficiently using natural resources. Conservation efforts begun in India before 5 AD, as efforts are made to have a forest administration. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is the ministry responsible for implementation of environmental and forestry program in India, which include the management of national parks, conservation of flora and fauna of India, and pollution controls.
History
Protected areas
As of May 2004, the
Water Conservation
From the most dry regions to the wettest zones in the world, India has them all. Water is not just a natural resource but a political issue in most parts of the country. The Cauvery dispute between Karnataka-Tamil Nadu, Mahanadi dispute between Chhattisgarh-Orissa are a few examples of the tussle for water.[4] The Tamil Nadu government's rainwater harvesting efforts, [5] civil society movements such as Environmentalist Foundation of India (E.F.I's) community based lake/pond conservation efforts are seen as efforts to conserve water in India.[6]
Endangered species
Legislation
- Forest Rights Act
- Indian Forest Act, 1927
- Wild Life Protection Act, 1972, Amended 2003
- Wildlife Protection Act of 1972
Forests
Ecological issues are an integral and important part of environmental issues challenging India. Poor
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. India is one of the 12 mega regions of the world.
Indian forests types include
Until recently, India lacked an objective way to determine the quantity of forests it had, and the quality of forests it had.
- Forest cover measurement methods
Prior to the 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 (177×10 6 acres). 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. [citation needed]
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 percent. (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 percent and above
- Moderately Dense Forest: All lands, with a forest cover with canopy density of 40–70 percent
- Open Forest: All lands, with forest cover with canopy density of ten to forty percent
- 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 percent
- Tree Cover: Land with tree patches (blocks and linear) outside the recorded forest area exclusive of forest cover and less than the minimum mappable area of one 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 Indian 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:[7]
- 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
India hosts significant
In recent decades, human encroachment has posed a threat to
These laws did not have the effect they intended.[citation needed]
In 1985, India created the Ministry of Environment and Forests. This was followed by a National Forest Policy and the major government reforms of the early 1990s.
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).
From 1990 to 2000, FAO finds India was the fifth largest gainer in forest coverage in the world; whilst from 2000 to 2010, FAO considers India as the third largest gainer in forest coverage.[9]
- National Forest Commission and India's afforestation programme
In 2003, India set up a National Forest Commission to review and assess India's policy and law, its effect on India's forests, its impact of local forest communities, and to make recommendations to achieve sustainable forest and ecological security in India.[10] The report made over 300 recommendations including the following:
- India must pursue rural development and animal husbandry policies to address local communities need to find affordable cattle fodder and grazing. To avoid destruction of local forest cover, fodder must reach these communities on reliable roads and other infrastructure, in all seasons year round.
- The Forest Rights Bill is likely to be harmful to forest conservation and ecological security. The Forest Rights Bill became a law since 2007.
- The government should work closely with mining companies. Revenue generated from lease of mines must be pooled into a dedicated fund to conserve and improve the quality of forests in the region where the mines are located.
- Power to declare ecologically sensitive areas must be with each Indian state.
- The mandate of State Forest Corporations and government owned monopolies must be changed.
- Government should reform regulations and laws that ban felling of trees and transit of wood within India. Sustainable agro-forestry and farm forestry must be encouraged through financial and regulatory reforms, particularly on privately owned lands.
India's national forest policy expects to invest US$26.7 billion by 2020, to pursue nationwide afforestation coupled with forest conservation, with the goal of increasing India's forest cover from 20% to 33%.[11]
Notable organisations
- Bombay Natural History Society
- Environmentalist Foundation of India
- National Tiger Conservation Authority
- Nature Conservation Foundation
- Pragya
- WWF-India
- Wildlife Protection Society of India
- Wildlife Trust of India
Notable conservationists
- Dr KK Mohammed Koya Sea Cucumber Conservation Reserve
- Kenneth Anderson
- Chandi Prasad Bhatt
- Billy Arjan Singh
- Salim Ali
- Romulus Whitaker
- Arun Krishnamurthy
- A. J. T. John Singh
- Ashok Kumar (Founder, WTI)
- H. S. Panwar
- Atmaram Pandurang
- Sakharam Arjun
- Saad Bin Jung
- Meena Venkataraghavan
- Saroj R. Choudhury
- T. F. Bourdillon
- Jim Corbett
- K. Ullas Karanth
- Mysore Doreswamy Madhusudan
- Parbati Barua
- Snake Shyam
- Valmik Thapar
- Belinda Wright
See also
- Appiko movement
- Chipko movement
- Conservation reserves and community reserves of India
- Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History
- Ralegan Siddhi
- Arid Forest Research Institute (AFRI)
References
- ^ ISBN 9788170354215.
- ^ "The Edicts of King Ashoka (also, see other translations)". Buddhist Publication Society. 1994. Archived from the original on 2014-03-28.
- ^ ISBN 9788185182889.
- ^ "Explained: What the Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and TN is all about". 15 February 2018.
- ^ "Rain Water Harvesting".
- ^ "This Organisation Has Restored 39 Lakes in 10 Years. This Year, You Can Help Them Fight Drought!". 6 May 2017.
- ^ "India's Forests" (PDF). Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India. 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 4, 2013.
- ^ Indira Gandhi Conservation Monitoring Centre (IGCMC), New Delhi and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK. 2001. Biodiversity profile for India Archived 2011-11-21 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ a b "Global Forest Resources Assessment 2010" (PDF). FAO. 2011.
- ^ "National Forest Commission Report, Chapters 1–8" (PDF). Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India. 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-19.
- ^ "India's Forests: Forest Policy and Legislative Framework, Chapter 3–5" (PDF). Ministry of Environment and Forests. 2009. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-26.