Government Permits Forest Plantations for Private Players, Conservationists Flag Risks

The government has issued a letter to all states and union territories informing that private companies could least forest land and carry out plantations for commercial benefit without paying any penalties, making a shift in how India’s forests have been traditionally managed.

Forestry activities, including plantations, have typically been carried out by the forest department, since forests are considered to be publically owned. However, the letter makes the application of India’s primary forest conservation law more flexible, by allowing non-government entities to lease forest land—with permission—for the purposes of restoration or silviculture and reclassifying it as “forest activity”.

Citing a report provided by a Ministry spokesperson, Mongabay-India reported that this step would lead to partnerships between government and non-government entities to undertake afforestation on degraded forest lands and therefore will help increase India’s green cover.

Warning that commercial tree plantations in natural ecosystems can be ecologically harmful, Anand Osuri, a restoration practitioner and researcher with the Nature Conservation Foundation, told Mongabay that tree plantations is not same as ecological restoration. He further noted that documents in the public domain cause concern as they prioritise commercial interests more than genuine ecological recovery.

“We urgently need policies that support and help scale up ecological restoration. Silviculture and other forms of economically oriented tree planting could play a role when targeting agricultural and agroforestry landscapes. But expanding commerce in the name of restoration in protected natural landscapes will critically harm biodiversity, local livelihoods and climate and water security,” he told Mongabay.

Conservation Versus Commerce

Independent studies have warned against equating plantations with the recovery of forests. Monoculture plantations store less carbon and support much less biodiversity than natural forests, according to a 2021 study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. Similarly, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) made a distinction between forests and tree plantations, pointing out that commercial plantations frequently fall short in providing ecosystem services like habitat protection and water regulation.

“Where plantations are established by replacing forests or other long established natural vegetation, the short-term release of carbon during establishment must be balanced against the longer-term sequestration in the timber; in some cases the carbon balance remains unfavourable for decades,” the 2020 FAO report stated.

Compensatory afforestation projects in India have previously been flagged by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) due to low survival rates and ecological mismatch. These results underscore concerns that if ecological safeguards are inadequate, allowing forest land to be used for commercial plantations could jeopardise long-term conservation objectives.