Is India’s forest cover really increasing? Official maps don’t tell you the whole truth

February 11, 2022 01:06 pm | Updated February 13, 2022 10:16 am IST It is not long after dawn, but the air in the Borajan rainforest in upper Assam is already warm and heavy with humidity. Even as India’s official reports have been claiming every two years that the country’s forest cover is going up and up, the same reports have also been lumping natural forests and commercial plantations as ‘forest’, a decision defended recently even by the environment Minister. But sadly, this is easily overlooked when we make poor maps of forest cover that do not distinguish natural forests from highly-modified landscapes merely because the latter meet ISFR’s minimum criteria of 10% tree cover across a hectare to qualify as a ‘forest’. Forest birds including minivets and tree-dwellers such as giant squirrels may also survive in such plantations, but at lower numbers and only when they adjoin natural forests. So, for all these reasons, if India’s overall increase in forest cover is due to an increase in plantations, while natural forests are declining, it will have serious negative impacts on ecology and economy, climate and biodiversity.