📍 98% Shortfall in Green Mission & Deforestation Amid Climate Change!

📍 98% Shortfall in Green Mission & Deforestation Amid Climate Change!

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India told Parliament in August 2026 that the government has failed to meet its targets to increase and improve forest cover in India, by nearly 98 per cent. 

South Asia is one of the regions most vulnerable to the global climate crisis. The World Bank’s South Asia Climate Change Roadmap warns that annual economic losses could hit $160 billion by 2030 in the region, heavily impacting poor families and worsening food insecurity. The Bank also estimates that over the past two decades more than 750 million people in South Asia have been affected by at least one climate-related disaster.

For a region so vulnerable to climate change, forests, a crucial asset for any nation, should be at the centre of our adaptation strategies. They hold water, protect soil, moderate temperatures, store carbon and provide suitable habitats for an extraordinary range of plants animals, microbes. For millions of people, particularly forest-dependent communities, they are also a source of food, fuel, medicine and livelihoods. So, the obvious policy response should be to protect existing forests and increase green cover.

Recognising the climate catastrophe staring at us, The Government of India formulated the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) 18 years ago in 2008. Of the eight missions flagged for urgent action to cope with climate change, an important one was the Green India Mission (GIM). The focus of the GIM is on restoring, enhancing and protecting, the country’s diminishing forest and tree cover. Three specific targets were laid down: Increase forest and tree cover on five million hectares; Improve the quality of the forest and its species diversity on another five million hectares and Support and Supplement the forest-based livelihoods of the roughly three million households of forest dwelling communities. 

We are failing on all fronts of the Green India Mission. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s performance audit of the Green India Mission, tabled in Parliament in August 2026, shows just how large the gap is between stated goals and what has been achieved. The GIM had set a target of increasing forest cover by 1.4 million hectares between 2015-16 and 2024-25. The actual increase was only about 0.03 million hectares, a 97.57% shortfall. This embarrassing figure reveals the absolute and total failure on the part of those whose job it was to use the allotted funds to meet the targets of the National Mission to increase forest cover. The story is similar when it comes to improving the quality of existing forests. The CAG found a shortfall of nearly 92%. This is not just inefficiency; it is a catastrophic inability to recognise the gravity of the climate crisis and its consequences.

Why did this happen? The CAG audit is scathing, pointing to the i) Failure to use available funds with states utilising just half of the money available; ii) Lack of convergence between programs and deficient monitoring leading to structural gaps; iii) Failure to secure the massive fund proposed for the second phase and inappropriate selection of landscapes for afforestation. 

In this backdrop, the scale of government sanctioned deforestation, the cutting down of large tracts of forest for so called ‘development’ is baffling. Government data shows that between April 2023, and March 2026, 71,023.30 hectares of forest land was approved for diversion to non-forestry purposes across India. Madhya Pradesh accounted for 19,432 hectares, Odisha 8,966 hectares, Arunachal Pradesh 7,335 hectares, Jharkhand 5,410 hectares and Chhattisgarh 4,219 hectares. 

Mining and stone quarrying accounted for the largest share of 16,463 hectares. Hydroelectric and irrigation projects accounted for another 14,294 hectares, while roads accounted for 12,715 hectares. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet. Every hectare represents a piece of an ecosystem, and often a landscape that has taken decades, sometimes centuries, to evolve. 

Look at Hasdeo in Chhattisgarh. The Hasdeo-Arand forest in North Chhattisgarh is one of the most important forest patches of Central India, popularly referred to as the lungs of Central India. The Adani Parsa East and Kente Basan (PEKB) coal mine is located in this biodiversity-rich region. Approximately 4.48 lakh trees are slated to be cut down in phases. Around 1,013 hectares of closed canopy forest has already been cleared and the government has also given in-principle clearance for the felling of trees in 1,742.6 hectares for the Kente Extension coal block. 

In the misguided project to link the Ken and Betwa rivers in Madhya Pradesh, 9,000 hectares including 5,761 hectares of forest land will be submerged. This will involve killing approximately 215,875 trees. Not just that, the project will also claim over 4,000 hectares of the densely forested Panna Tiger Reserve and 1,314 hectares of its buffer zone. The highway widening construction activity linking the Char Dhams of Uttarakhand (Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri) has already claimed nearly 60,000 trees. 

These are just some examples. Looming in the future is the mega project to destroy the biosphere of the environmentally unique and fragile Great Nicobar island. A commercial hub including an airport, an international transshipment terminal, a township and associated infrastructure is to be built for which rainforests will be slashed and biodiversity rich indigenous lands will be appropriated. According to government records, approval has already been given for the diversion of 130.75 sq km of forest land. 

The CAG’s findings on the Green India Mission should not be seen merely as another story of a failed government programme. The larger question is about the coherence of our environment policy. On one side, we recognise forests as critical to climate resilience. On the other, we continue to divert existing forests for mining, infrastructure and so-called development projects. Both development and environmental protection are necessary. But development cannot mean treating natural forests as expendable, interchangeable pieces of land. The real test of India's climate policy will not be the number of saplings planted for a photograph. It will be whether the mature forests that have survived for generations are still standing when the next heatwave, drought, flood or extreme rainfall arrives.

this article appeared in The Asian Age on 03 Oct 26 : https://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/suman-sahai98-shortfall-in-green-mission-deforestation-amid-climate-change-1992851

📍Who is saving and who is destroying the forest ?

A recent report has just told us that India can save its forests by winning the war on poverty. Indicating thereby that the poor exploit the forest recklessly to fulfil their needs. But is this really true? How come there are dense jungles where the Adivasi communities, hardly ranked as the “richest” on the economic scale, have been living for generations? And how is it that forests or even orchards near cities are hacked and cleared for projects like luxury housing or amusement parks?
 
Forest dwellers usually secure their livelihoods in sustainable ways and they treat their forests as their strongest allies, not their enemies. The concept of Sacred Groves in the North East shows us how these communities venerate their forests and trees. The Sarna of the Chotanagpur adivasis are groves of old Sal trees which are sacred to them, where they believe their village deities and spirits reside. Sacred Groves and Sarnas are inviolate. The forests are protected.
 
On the other hand, the township of Gurgaon (now Gurugram), part of the National Capital Region has been built on orchards, fields and pastures. No, it is not the poor who ravage the forests, it is the rich with their bottomless greed.
 
We are seeing how the lush, biodiversity rich Hasdeo forest is being butchered, heartless brutes treading over the weeping women holding on to the feet of the monsters who are vandalising their trees, their deities and gods, the spirits of their ancestors. The communities of Hasdeo are not destroying their forest, Adani and his henchmen are doing that.
 
So please stop the hypocrisy about winning the war on poverty to save forests. Stop spinning yarns about income generation activities that will be mired in corruption and never materialise. Instead, restrain the unbridled avarice of the super-rich honchos…and the forests will be saved.

The News - https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/not-binary-india-can-save-its-forests-by-winning-the-war-on-poverty/article71100846.ece

 📌 WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY 2026: WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE CELEBRATING?

Today is WorldEnvironmentDay. A day for speeches, hashtags, photo-ops with saplings, solemn pledges and carefully crafted messages about our love for nature.

But forgive me for asking - what exactly are we celebrating?

The environment that we are systematically destroying? The forests we are cutting down for mining? The rivers we are poisoning with industrial waste and sewage? The mountains we are blasting in the name of infrastructure development? The biodiversity we are driving to extinction? Or the tribal communities we are uprooting from lands they have protected for

generations?

Nothing captures the hypocrisy of this annual ritual better than what is happening in the Hasdeo Forests of Chhattisgarh, one of India’s richest forest ecosystems, often called the 'Lungs of Central India'.

I’m not against generating energy or against development, but the question is why the easiest solution always seems to be sacrificing forests, biodiversity and indigenous rights.

Year after year, governments assure us that environmental protection is a priority. Prime Ministers and assorted others speak passionately about climate change, sustainability and green growth. Yet on the ground, forests continue to disappear under excavators and mining clearances.

World Environment Day has increasingly become an exercise in collective self-congratulation and is reduced to mere tokenism that allows governments, corporations and even citizens to feel virtuous for a day while the destruction continues uninterrupted for the remaining 364.

For decades, the scientists, environmentalists, and everyone concerned have been warning that the climate crisis is no longer a future threat. It has already entered our homes: the heatwaves, floods, droughts, crop failures and disappearing water sources are real-life

manifestations.

I am pained to say that while leaders plant ceremonial saplings and deliver speeches on sustainability, an estimated 5 lac trees are proposed to be slaughtered in Hasdeo forests; over 15000 Adivasi families will be impacted, whose lives depend on these forests for their livelihoods, for their very survival. Let that sink in. If this is environmental protection, what does environmental destruction look like?