India’s disputed compensatory afforestation policy at odds with new IPCC report

Not degrading existing ecosystems in the first place will do more to lower the impact of the climate crisis than restoring ecosystems that have been destroyed – a finding that speaks to an increasingly contested policy in India that has allowed forests in one part of the country to be cut down and ‘replaced’ with those elsewhere. “We have known all along that creating single-species plantations in, say, Haryana does not really come close to a natural sal forest lost to a development project in, say, Central Indian forests in terms of biodiversity, local livelihoods, hydrological services, and sequestered carbon,” Sharachchandra Lele, distinguished fellow in Environmental Policy & Governance, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, told The Hindu by email. What this means is that,” he continued, “in addition to livelihood impacts, biodiversity impacts, and hydrological impacts, the climate impacts of such development projects also cannot adequately be ‘compensated’ by compensatory afforestation. The IPCC report also found that the sole option with more mitigating potential than “reducing conversion of natural ecosystems” was solar power and that the third-highest was wind power. However, the IPCC report also noted that “reducing conversion of natural ecosystems” could be more expensive than wind power, yet still less expensive than “ecosystem restoration, afforestation, restoration”, for every GtCO2e.