AFFORESTATION – FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE

Kalpana Palkhiwala

“Stockholm was without doubt the landmark event in the growth of international environmentalism”, wrote John McCormick in the book Reclaiming Paradise. “It was the first occasion on which the political, social and economic problems of the global environment were discussed at an intergovernmental forum with a view to actually taking corrective action.”

The UN General Assembly established the World Environment Day (WED) in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, observed on 5th June every year. World Environment Day is one of the principle vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), also established in 1972, uses WED to stimulate consciousness on the environment and mobilize public action.

The agenda of the World Environment Day is to give a human face to environmental issues, empower people to become agents of sustainable and equitable development, promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes regarding the environment and advocate partnership across localities, regions and nations to ensure that all people enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

The theme for WED 2009 is ‘Your Planet Needs you- Unite to Combat Climate Change’. The theme reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and marks conceptual links between overcoming poverty and improving management of forests. This year’s host of the World Environment Day is Mexico.

Mexico, a country at the crossroads of the Green Economy and increasingly at the centre of regional and global affairs in the fight against climate change will host the International 2009 World Environment Day celebrations. The decision to choose Mexico as the host reflects the growing practical and political role of this Latin American country in the fight against climate change,including its growing participation in carbon markets. UNEP has now launched a new and more ambitious phase-the Seven Billion Tree Campaign.

Holding front for afforestation and climate change

Planting, nurturing, preserving and conserving plants and trees is a deep rooted practice with historical significance in India. In some communities, a prayer is said and forgiveness is sought from the tree before cutting it. Sacred groves are common throughout India, where clusters of plants and trees are protected and worshipped for prosperity. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism articulate respect for plants and trees, treating them as living beings. Buddhist monks, constantly on the move to preach, halt their travels during monsoon to ensure they do not destroy saplings and sprouted seeds. Jainism forbids the consumption of sprouts which are considered nascent life that should be allowed to grow. Festivals related to trees abound. One such festival is Van Mahotsav, initiated in 1950 by Shri K. M. Munshi, the then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food, a visionary who sought to enthuse people about conservation of forests and trees.

This week-long festival of tree planting is organised every year in July in a bid to retain the vanishing forest cover of the country. Cutting down trees on a massive scale has greatly affected the environment and it is imperative to do something about forests’ conservation. Planting of trees is a symbolic gesture to celebrate our reverence for all things that grow in the forest.

NAEB

The National Afforestation and Eco-Development Board (NAEB) in the Ministry of Environment and Forests is responsible for promoting afforestation, tree planting, ecological restoration and eco-development activities in the country, with special attention to degraded forest areas and lands adjoining forests, national parks, sanctuaries and other protected areas as well as the ecologically fragile Western Himalayas, Aravalis and Western Ghats.

NAP

The National Afforestation Programme (NAP) Scheme is the flagship scheme of NAEB, providing physical and institutional support to Forest Development Agencies (FDAs), which are a major step towards the institutionalization of Joint Forest Management. The FDA has been conceived and established as a federation of Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) at the Forest Division level to undertake holistic development of forests with people's participation. The objectives of the scheme are:

• Protection and conservation of natural resources through the active involvement of communities

• Checking land degradation, deforestation and loss of biodiversity

• Ecological restoration, environmental conservation and eco-development

• Building the capacity of village level organization to manage natural resources in and around villages in a sustainable manner

• Fulfillment of the broader objectives of productivity, equity, and sustainability for the common good

• Improve quality of life and subsistence of people living in and around forests and

• Capability endowment and skill enhancement for improving the employability of the rural people

All 28 states, including the Autonomous Hill Districts (AHDC) are covered by this program, as are wildlife areas. Rehabilitation of abandoned, degraded shifting cultivation regions and regeneration of medicinal plants is also undertaken.

Achievements

• 795 FDAs have been operationalised so far since the launch of the FDA mechanism in 2000-01, at a cost of Rs. 2,675.26 crores to treat a total area of 157.90 lakh ha. (as on 31.3.2009). Rehabilitation of shifting cultivation lands have been given specific focus under the programme, and 34 jhum projects have been sanctioned in NE States and in Orissa.

• As on 31.3.2009, Rs. 345.62 crore was released to FDAs during the year 2008-09 for implementation of National Afforestation Programme. (NAP)

• 97 million human days of work were generated, benefiting approximately 12 million households which included 22% Scheduled Castes and 38% Scheduled Tribes.

• Around 5.3 million households in project villages which had 25% Scheduled Caste and 21% Scheduled Tribe were covered and

• Entry-point activity beneficiaries are estimated to be around 1.92 million households out of which 23% were Scheduled Castes and 27% were Scheduled Tribes.

Eco-Development Forces (EDF) Scheme

The Eco Task Forces (ETFs) Scheme was initiated by the Ministry of Defence in 1982 with a view to securing involvement of ex-servicemen in afforestation and eco-development in remote areas to restore degraded ecosystems through afforestation, soil conservation and water resource management. The Scheme has been in operation for the past four plans.

There are currently six Eco-Task Force Battalions raised through ex-servicemen/Territorial Army Personnel. They cover the Shivalik Hills, Uttarakhand; Rajasthan Cannal, Bajju; Jammu and Kashmir; Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand; Sonitpur (West) and Haltugaon, Assam.

Proposed Gram Van Yojana Scheme

Gram/Panchayat Van Yojana, a new scheme is proposed which will involve Panchayati Raj Institutions in afforestation/tree planting in non forest lands.

India released its National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPPC) on 30th June 2008 to outline its strategy of climate change. The National Action Plan advocates a strategy that promotes the adaptation to climate change and enhancing the sustainability of India’s development path. Eight National Missions on Climate Change

The National Solar Mission aims at increasing the share of solar energy in the total energy mix through development of new solar technologies, while attempting to expand the scope of other renewable and non fossil options such as nuclear energy, wind energy and biomass. The National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency comprises four new initiatives, namely, a market based mechanism for trading in certified energy savings in energy intensive large industries and facilities, accelerating the shift to energy efficient appliances in designated sectors, demand side management programmes in all sectors by capturing future energy savings, and developing fiscal instruments to promote energy efficiency. The National Mission on Sustainable Habitat attempts to promote energy efficiency in buildings, management of solid waste and modal shift to public transport including transport options based on bio-diesel and hydrogen. The National Water Mission has, as its objective, the conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring more equitable distribution both across and within states.

The National Mission for sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem is aimed at evolving management measures for sustaining and safeguarding the Himalayan glacier and mountain eco system. The National Mission for a Green India focuses on enhancing eco system services and carbon sinks through afforestation on degraded forest land in line with the national policy of expanding forest and tree cover to 33% of the total land area of the country. The National Mission for Sustaining Agriculture will develop strategies to make Indian agriculture more resilient to climate change through new varieties of thermal productivity of rain fed agriculture. The National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change is intended to identify the challenges of and response to climate change through research and technology development and ensure funding of high quality and focused research into aspects of climate change.(pib)

* Deputy Director, PIB, Delhi.

Your Planet Needs You : Unite to Combat Climate Change

A.N.Khan

Climate change is the major, overriding environmental issue of our time and the single greatest challenge facing environmental regulators. It is a growing crisis with economic, health and safety, food production, security and other dimensions. Mexico city, the capital of Mexico will serve as the International host city for this year’s World Environment Day (WED), with the theme ‘Your Planet Needs You – Unite to Combat Climate Change’, which seeks to propel nations to reach agreement on a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen in December 2009. Mexico has seized the opportunities of the carbon markets and has become second only to Brazil in terms of wind, solar, biogas and other Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in the region.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has now launched a new and more ambitious phase – the ‘Seven Billon Tree Campaign’. This aims to see more than one new tree planted for every person alive by the Copenhagen meeting.

The highlight of this year’s WED is the launch of the ‘Climate Heroes’, which support individuals who are undertaking exceptional personal feats, high profile expeditions, and other acts of environmental activism to demonstrate their commitment and to raise awareness for one simple idea : Your Plant Needs You! These projects focus on environmental ‘hot topics’ like CO2 output, finding smart solutions to beat waste and tree planting.

UNEP has collaborated with these Climate Heroes to help inspire and motivate people to unite to combat climate change. The Climate Heroes call on individual to do what they can : from adopting the simplest habits like turning off running water when one is brushing teeth, to organizing a public event for WED. They also outline how individuals can cut down by half their climate footprint by quite simple daily chores. For example, jogging around the park rather than on an electric powered treadmill will cut your daily emission by 1 Kg. Around 80% of freshwater is used for irrigation – simple technique like drip irrigation could dramatically cut this use.

Every year over 60 billion tons of plastic are produced, much of it for one time use and less than 5 per cent of the world’s plastics are recycled. National Geographic estimates that over 85 million plastic bottles are used every three minutes. Much of plastic waste that is not incinerated or land-filled, makes its way to the oceans. As the waste breakdown, it is mistaken for food, kills hundreds of thousands of birds and marine life, and is now making its way into our food chain. Project Kaisel consists of a team of scientists and environmentalists who have come together with a common purpose to study how to capture plastic waste in the ocean, detoxify and recycle it into diesel fuel.

Climate change represents a challenge that recognizes no national boundaries. There are countries that have pledged to become zero emission economies not just in terms of CO2, but also in terms of other greenhouse gases. For example Norway’s challenge is oil and gas production, whereas New Zealand’s is livestock methane emissions. Almost 100% of Iceland’s electricity is generated by geothermal heat, but it faces challenges in terms of transport.

The old energy inefficient electric bulb date back to almost two centuries. People are now switching over to the energy saving ones. The World is already glimpsing a Green Economy – from the 300 financial institutions with $ 13 trillion of assets who are signatories to UNEP and the UN’s Global Compact Principles for Responsible Investment to the $ 160 billion boom in renewable energy transactions. And it is not just in developed countries, two of the biggest wind power companies are based in China and India respectively.

The current food crisis is predominantly one about prices rather than about supply. In many countries in the past 50 years or so the emphasis has been on hiking up production at the expense of all else. The emergence of marine ‘dead zones’ – deoxygenated areas of sea in which fish and other marine life-forms have either died or fled – are in part linked with the misuse of artificial fertilizers.

Shifting weather patterns threaten food production through increased unpredictability of precipitation, rising sea levels contaminate coastal freshwater reserves and increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, and a warming atmosphere aids the pole-ward spread of pests and disease once limited to the tropics. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforests and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations. The most dangerous climate changes may still be avoided if we transform our hydrocarbon-based energy systems.

Some people may consider a tropical forest merely a collection of trees worth more as logs and timber exports. Although, these trees absorb the carbon emission of the developed countries – a service that might be worth billions of dollars a year, if only we factored them into a more intelligent economic system that included the GDP generated by nature, and not just GDP based on making cars, TVs and microwaves. Climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5 per cent of global GDP each year. In other words, a failure to act will lead to a significant disruption of the global economy – the recessions of the past and the present will be as nothing to those of the future. Conversely the Intergovernmental Panel to Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that combating climate change may cost as little as 0.1 – 0.2 per cent of global GDP a year over 30 years. (PIB)

*Freelance Writer

Disclaimer : The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of PIB

Afforestation – Fighting Climate Change

Afforestation – Fighting Climate Change 
Kalpana Palkhiwala

“Stockholm was without doubt the landmark event in the growth of international environmentalism”, wrote John McCormick in the book Reclaiming Paradise. “It was the first occasion on which the political, social and economic problems of the global environment were discussed at an intergovernmental forum with a view to actually taking corrective action.” 

The UN General Assembly established the World Environment Day (WED) in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment, observed on 5th June every year. World Environment Day is one of the principle vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), also established in 1972, uses WED to stimulate consciousness on the environment and mobilize public action. 

The agenda of the World Environment Day is to give a human face to environmental issues, empower people to become agents of sustainable and equitable development, promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes regarding the environment and advocate partnership across localities, regions and nations to ensure that all people enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

The theme for WED 2009 is ‘Your Planet Needs you- Unite to Combat Climate Change’. The theme reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and marks conceptual links between overcoming poverty and improving management of forests. This year’s host of the World Environment Day is Mexico. 

Mexico, a country at the crossroads of the Green Economy and increasingly at the centre of regional and global affairs in the fight against climate change will host the International 2009 World Environment Day celebrations. The decision to choose Mexico as the host reflects the growing practical and political role of this Latin American country in the fight against climate change, including its growing participation in carbon markets. UNEP has now launched a new and more ambitious phase-the Seven Billion Tree Campaign. 

Holding front for afforestation and climate change

Planting, nurturing, preserving and conserving plants and trees is a deep rooted practice with historical significance in India. In some communities, a prayer is said and forgiveness is sought from the tree before cutting it. Sacred groves are common throughout India, where clusters of plants and trees are protected and worshipped for prosperity. Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism articulate respect for plants and trees, treating them as living beings. Buddhist monks, constantly on the move to preach, halt their travels during monsoon to ensure they do not destroy saplings and sprouted seeds. Jainism forbids the consumption of sprouts which are considered nascent life that should be allowed to grow. Festivals related to trees abound. One such festival is Van Mahotsav, initiated in 1950 by Shri K. M. Munshi, the then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food, a visionary who sought to enthuse people about conservation of forests and trees.

This week-long festival of tree planting is organised every year in July in a bid to retain the vanishing forest cover of the country. Cutting down trees on a massive scale has greatly affected the environment and it is imperative to do something about forests’ conservation. Planting of trees is a symbolic gesture to celebrate our reverence for all things that grow in the forest.

NAEB

The National Afforestation and Eco-Development Board (NAEB) in the Ministry of Environment and Forests is responsible for promoting afforestation, tree planting, ecological restoration and eco-development activities in the country, with special attention to degraded forest areas and lands adjoining forests, national parks, sanctuaries and other protected areas as well as the ecologically fragile Western Himalayas, Aravalis and Western Ghats.

NAP

The National Afforestation Programme (NAP) Scheme is the flagship scheme of NAEB, providing physical and institutional support to Forest Development Agencies (FDAs), which are a major step towards the institutionalization of Joint Forest Management. The FDA has been conceived and established as a federation of Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) at the Forest Division level to undertake holistic development of forests with people's participation. The objectives of the scheme are:

• Protection and conservation of natural resources through the active involvement of communities

• Checking land degradation, deforestation and loss of biodiversity

• Ecological restoration, environmental conservation and eco-development

• Building the capacity of village level organization to manage natural resources in and around villages in a sustainable manner

• Fulfillment of the broader objectives of productivity, equity, and sustainability for the common good

• Improve quality of life and subsistence of people living in and around forests and

• Capability endowment and skill enhancement for improving the employability of the rural people

All 28 states, including the Autonomous Hill Districts (AHDC) are covered by this program, as are wildlife areas. Rehabilitation of abandoned, degraded shifting cultivation regions and regeneration of medicinal plants is also undertaken.

Achievements

• 795 FDAs have been operationalised so far since the launch of the FDA mechanism in 2000-01, at a cost of Rs. 2,675.26 crores to treat a total area of 157.90 lakh ha. (as on 31.3.2009). Rehabilitation of shifting cultivation lands have been given specific focus under the programme, and 34 jhum projects have been sanctioned in NE States and in Orissa.

• As on 31.3.2009, Rs. 345.62 crore was released to FDAs during the year 2008-09 for implementation of National Afforestation Programme. (NAP)

• 97 million human days of work were generated, benefiting approximately 12 million households which included 22% Scheduled Castes and 38% Scheduled Tribes.

• Around 5.3 million households in project villages which had 25% Scheduled Caste and 21% Scheduled Tribe were covered and

• Entry-point activity beneficiaries are estimated to be around 1.92 million households out of which 23% were Scheduled Castes and 27% were Scheduled Tribes. 

Eco-Development Forces (EDF) Scheme 

The Eco Task Forces (ETFs) Scheme was initiated by the Ministry of Defence in 1982 with a view to securing involvement of ex-servicemen in afforestation and eco-development in remote areas to restore degraded ecosystems through afforestation, soil conservation and water resource management. The Scheme has been in operation for the past four plans.

There are currently six Eco-Task Force Battalions raised through ex-servicemen/Territorial Army Personnel. They cover the Shivalik Hills, Uttarakhand; Rajasthan Cannal, Bajju; Jammu and Kashmir; Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand; Sonitpur (West) and Haltugaon, Assam.

Proposed Gram Van Yojana Scheme 

Gram/Panchayat Van Yojana, a new scheme is proposed which will involve Panchayati Raj Institutions in afforestation/tree planting in non forest lands.

India released its National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPPC) on 30th June 2008 to outline its strategy of climate change. The National Action Plan advocates a strategy that promotes the adaptation to climate change and enhancing the sustainability of India’s development path. Eight National Missions on Climate Change 

The National Solar Mission aims at increasing the share of solar energy in the total energy mix through development of new solar technologies, while attempting to expand the scope of other renewable and non fossil options such as nuclear energy, wind energy and biomass. The National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency comprises four new initiatives, namely, a market based mechanism for trading in certified energy savings in energy intensive large industries and facilities, accelerating the shift to energy efficient appliances in designated sectors, demand side management programmes in all sectors by capturing future energy savings, and developing fiscal instruments to promote energy efficiency. The National Mission on Sustainable Habitat attempts to promote energy efficiency in buildings, management of solid waste and modal shift to public transport including transport options based on bio-diesel and hydrogen. The National Water Mission has, as its objective, the conservation of water, minimizing wastage and ensuring more equitable distribution both across and within states.

The National Mission for sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem is aimed at evolving management measures for sustaining and safeguarding the Himalayan glacier and mountain eco system. The National Mission for a Green India focuses on enhancing eco system services and carbon sinks through afforestation on degraded forest land in line with the national policy of expanding forest and tree cover to 33% of the total land area of the country. The National Mission for Sustaining Agriculture will develop strategies to make Indian agriculture more resilient to climate change through new varieties of thermal productivity of rain fed agriculture. The National Mission on Strategic Knowledge for Climate Change is intended to identify the challenges of and response to climate change through research and technology development and ensure funding of high quality and focused research into aspects of climate change. (PIB)

* Deputy Director, PIB, Delhi.