AGARTALA: India’s environmental stability is at stake as the country’s forest cover is diminishing at an alarming rate of 47500 hectares per annum.
Only 11.51% of the country’s total geographical area has the adequate forest cover as against the stipulated 33% according to a forest survey of India (FSI) report.
India has only 64.01 million hectares of actual forest cover as against the recorded 75.1 million hectares and out of this only 37.85 million hectares have over 40% crown density forest area. Moreover the average productivity of Indian forest is just 0.5 cubic meters per hectare which is way behind the world average of 2.1 cubic meters says the report titled state of forest report 1989.
The average growing stock of wood too is only about 65 cubic meters per hectare which compares poorly with the world standards of 110 cubic meters per hectare it said.
The 16456 sq km increase in dense forest cover as a result of government’s conservation efforts was offset by the decrease of open forests over 19174 sq km it said.
Barring the northeastern hill states Goa and the union territories of Andaman and Nicobar and Dadra and Nagar Haveli all other states have less than the stipulated forest cover as per the national forest policy a state wise analysis showed.
The situation is wrong in Gujarat Haryana Punjab Jammu and Kashmir Rajasthan West Bengal and the Union territories of Chandigarh Delhi and Daman and Diu where the forest cover is less than 10% of the area.
The report says only Sikkim Manipur Mizoram Nagaland are self-sufficient in forest resources vis-a-vis the human consumption of its products.
At the present level of consumption of forest produce and on the current rate of productivity the country needs a minimum of 0.47 hectares of forest per individual in order to meet his basic needs the report says.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 1, 1991
