National Mission for Green India

The mission was launched in 2014 and is a part of eight missions outlined under India’s action plan for addressing climate change. The mission aims at protecting, restoring and enhancing India’s diminishing forest cover and responding to climate change by a combination of adaptation and mitigation measures.

Major Goals

• To increase forest/tree cover to the extent of 5 million hectares (mha) and improve quality of forest/tree cover on another 5 mha of forest/non-forest lands; Separate sub-targets exists for different forest types and ecosystems (e.g. Wetland, grassland, dense forest, etc.).
• To improve/enhance eco-system services like carbon sequestration and storage (in forests and other ecosystems), hydrological services and biodiversity; along with provisioning services like fuel, fodder, and timber and non-timber forest produces (Minor forest produces or MFPs) etc. which are expected to result from the treatment of 10 mha.
• To increase forest based livelihood income for about 3 million households in and around these forest areas.
• Enhanced annual CO₂ sequestration by 50 to 60 million tons in the year 2020.

Issues

• As per Parliamentary Panel on Performance of National Action Plan for Climate Change report (2019), Green India Mission is highly under-funded. Out of 60000 crore needed in 10 years, only 47.78 crores were allotted in 2017-18.
• The panel also raised doubts on the target submitted at UNGA under NDC.
• The committee also points out that the afforestation done under the mission was only aimed at increasing tree count without considering the soil and weather conditions.

Suggestions

• The government must ensure higher budgetary allocation and see to it that it’s perfectly utilized.
• Afforestation must be done as per the ecological requirement.