Examine the status of forest resources of India and its resultant impact on climate change.

Status of the resource

• Geographic imbalance: dense cover in the Northeast, Western Ghats, and pockets of the Himalaya and Central Indian belt; the plains and western drylands are tree-poor.
• Quality gap: rising ‘tree cover’ can be plantations, coconut, and social forestry while old-growth and biodiversity fall. Open forest and scrub are not the same climate asset as a rainforest.
• Drivers of loss: linear projects, mining, encroachment, fire, grazing, and invasive species. Legal diversion under forest law continues even as national targets speak of more green.
• Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognised community rights; implementation is patchy, yet excluding people has also failed. Status must be read as ecology plus tenure.
• Community and sacred groves, CAMPA money, and Green India Mission are the official repair kit, with mixed delivery.

Resultant climate impact

• Standing forests store carbon in biomass and soil; felling and fire release it and cut future sequestration, working against NDC forestry pledges.
• Western Ghat and Himalayan forests regulate monsoon orography, landslides, and glacier-fed catchment humidity; loss worsens both flood and drought locally.
• Northeast degradation plus jhum gone wrong can raise emissions and silt; well-managed jhum and community forest can do the opposite.
• Urban heat and Gangetic dryness grow when city lungs and ravine forests go. Climate change then feeds back as more fire and pest, a loop.
• Plantation of a single exotic is a weak sink and a weak adaptation tool compared with mixed native forest.

Examine, do not only lament

• India can still use FRA-plus-science community forestry, landscape restoration, and less rubber-stamp diversion to keep forests as a net sink.
• Climate policy that only counts canopy percentage will miss the quality that actually cools and stores.