Opinion Revamped Green India Mission: A matter of vulnerable ecosystems and livelihoods

The government’s decision to revise the Green India Mission (GIM) and focus on restoring vulnerable landscapes, such as those in the Aravalli range, the Western Ghats and the Himalaya, is welcome. Framed in 2014 during the last days of the UPA government, the mission is not only crucial to meeting India’s climate commitments, it is also important for biodiversity conservation and food and water security. The initiative has resulted in an appreciable increase in the country’s tree cover. However, it has been criticised for taking a plantation-centred approach and not doing justice to the mission’s broader goal of ecological revival. The GIM’s revised document attempts to course correct. Especially salient is its emphasis on zeroing in on micro-climatic zones through “regionally conducive best practices”. This initiative should be combined with addressing another concern of the original GIM, which has largely remained on paper — creating income-generating opportunities for people who rely on these ecosystems.

The Western Ghats, the Aravalli range and the Himalayan region face various challenges including deforestation, human-wildlife conflicts and changing rainfall patterns. Infrastructure development and unregulated tourism have added to their vulnerabilities. Last year, the catastrophic landslide in Wayanad underlined that the depletion of green cover and erratic rainfall had made the area susceptible to disasters. The new GIM document also notes that the Western Ghats ecosystem has degraded due to the felling of trees and illegal mining. Similarly, several studies have shown that the destruction of large chunks of the Aravalli ecosystem — especially its hills — has brought the Thar Desert close to the National Capital Region and this desertification has aggravated the area’s pollution problem.

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The restoration of most ecological hotspots in the country has been trapped in the environment-development binary. In 2011, a panel chaired by ecologist Madhav Gadgil underlined the need to regulate developmental activities in the entire 1,60,000 sq km stretch of the Western Ghats. Its recommendations were met with resistance across the political spectrum. The suggestions of the K Kasturirangan panel have also remained on paper. Similarly, illegal quarrying has persisted in the Aravalli range despite several SC orders, including as late as May 29. The problem is also that green initiatives have rarely taken people along. The challenge for the revamped GIM will, therefore, be to find ways to sustain and improve people’s livelihoods while enhancing ecological security.