News: The Central Government has released a revised roadmap for the National Mission for Green India, also known as the Green India Mission (GIM) on June 17.
About Green India Mission (GIM)
- It was rolled out in 2014 as one of the eight missions under India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).
- Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC)
- Aim: Its core aim is to combat climate change by increasing forest and tree cover, and the ecological restoration of degraded ecosystems and forests.
- It also aims to improve the livelihoods of communities dependent on forest produce.
- Objective: Its objective was to increase forest and tree cover on 5 million hectares and improve the quality of forest cover on another 5 million
Revised Green India Mission (GIM)
- It will take ‘micro-ecosystem’ approach in area and landscape-specific restoration activities in three important mountain ranges – the Aravallis, the Western Ghats, and the Indian Himalayas, along with the mangrove ecosystems.
- The original GIM was criticised for taking a plantation-centred approach.
- Syncing of different projects: GIM interventions will be synced with the Centre’s other environmental projects such as, recently launched Aravalli Green Wall project, aimed at combating the degradation and desertification in the mountain ranges.
- Restoration will be carried out through the recovery of open forests, agroforestry, and plantation on degraded lands.
Commitments and Projections of revised plan
- Commitments
- According to the ISRO’s Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas, around a third of India’s geographical area – 97.85 million hectares – underwent land degradation during 2018-19.
- India aims to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide through additional forest and tree cover by 2030, according to its national commitments to UNFCCC.
- India has also made an ambitious commitment to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
- Projections
- According to the FSI, this approach alone has the potential to sequester 1.89 billion tonnes of CO2 over approximately 15 million hectares.
- It estimates that by aligning ongoing schemes and intensifying afforestation efforts, GIM can help India expand its forest and tree cover up to 24.7 million hectares.
- This would be enough to achieve a carbon sink of 3.39 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030.
