Forest Governance in India — Why Forests Need Better Monitoring, FSI Methodology and Van Adhiniyam 2023

CURRENT AFFAIRS | MARCH 2026

Introduction

Forests occupy a paradoxical position in India’s governance landscape. On one hand, India ranks 9th globally in total forest area with 72,739 thousand hectares, and is 3rd in net annual forest area gain, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA) 2025 report. On the other hand, the quality, ecological integrity, and governance of India’s forests raise serious concerns that are often obscured by headline statistics. The critical question is not merely how much forest India has, but what kind of forest it has, how it is measured, and whether the governance framework is adequate to protect ecological values while accommodating legitimate development needs.

The Global Forest Context

According to the FAO GFRA 2025 report, approximately 32 percent of the world’s total land area — some 4.14 billion hectares — is covered by forests. The top five countries by total forest area are Russia, Brazil, Canada, the United States, and China, which together account for 54 percent of global forests. India’s 72,739 thousand hectares places it in the second tier of forest-endowed nations — significant but far from the global leaders.

More noteworthy is India’s ranking as the third-largest gainer of net forest area annually. This statistic, however, requires careful interpretation. Net forest area gain can result from genuine ecological restoration and afforestation, but it can also reflect methodological choices in how “forest” is defined and measured — a point of considerable controversy in India’s case.

The Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 2023

The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change introduced the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 2023 (commonly known as the Forest Conservation Amendment Act, 2023), which replaced the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, as the primary legislation governing the diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes. In a significant subsequent development, the Ministry eased guidelines under this Act, allowing both government and non-government entities to lease forest land for “forestry activity” — a term that encompasses commercial plantations, ecological restoration, and agroforestry.

This policy shift carries far-reaching implications:

• Public ownership and private use: In India, forests are overwhelmingly publicly owned — either by the central government, state governments, or community institutions. The leasing provision represents a departure from the traditional model of exclusive state management, opening forest land to private participation under the rubric of “forestry activity.” Critics argue that this could facilitate the conversion of natural forests into monoculture plantations — ecologically impoverished systems that maximise timber or biomass output at the expense of biodiversity.
• Definition of “forestry activity”: The term is broad enough to encompass genuine ecological restoration (planting native species, watershed protection, wildlife corridor creation) as well as commercial plantations (eucalyptus, teak, rubber) that have limited ecological value. Without clear definitional boundaries and robust oversight, the leasing provision could become a pathway for the commercial exploitation of public forest land.
• Community rights: The Forest Rights Act, 2006, recognised the rights of forest-dwelling communities — particularly Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers — over forest land and resources. The leasing provision under the Van Adhiniyam 2023 must be reconciled with these community rights; any leasing arrangement that displaces or marginalises forest-dwelling communities would be constitutionally and ethically problematic.

How India Measures Forest Cover: The FSI Methodology

The Forest Survey of India (FSI), an organisation under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, conducts biennial assessments of India’s forest cover, published as the India State of Forest Report (ISFR). The FSI defines “forest cover” as:

All lands more than one hectare in area with a tree canopy density of more than 10 percent, irrespective of ownership and legal status.

This definition has several important implications:

• Ownership-agnostic: Forest cover includes trees on private land, government land, railway land, cantonment land, and urban areas — not just legally classified forest land.
• Legal status-agnostic: Areas that are not legally classified as “forest” under the Indian Forest Act, 1927, or state forest laws are counted as “forest cover” if they meet the canopy density threshold. Conversely, legally classified forest land that has been degraded below the 10 percent canopy threshold is excluded from forest cover estimates.
• Composition-agnostic: The FSI counts monoculture plantations, commercial orchards, bamboo groves, palm plantations, and even urban tree cover as “forest cover,” alongside natural forests. This methodological choice inflates the headline forest cover figure while obscuring the critical distinction between ecologically rich natural forests and ecologically impoverished monocultures.

Satellite Technology

The FSI uses IRS-R2 (Indian Remote Sensing – ResourceSat-2) satellite data with the LISS-III sensor, which has a spatial resolution of 23.5 metres. While this resolution is adequate for broad-scale forest cover mapping, it is insufficient for distinguishing between natural forests and plantations, detecting selective logging, or identifying degradation within forest stands. Higher-resolution satellite data (sub-metre) and ground-truthing exercises are needed to complement the FSI’s satellite-based assessments.

The Measurement Problem: Why Counting All Trees as “Forest” Is Misleading

The fundamental criticism of the FSI methodology is that it conflates tree cover with forest. A eucalyptus plantation, a mango orchard, and a pristine tropical evergreen forest are ecologically different in every meaningful dimension — biodiversity, carbon sequestration capacity, hydrological function, soil conservation, and cultural value. Yet the FSI counts all three as “forest cover” if they meet the one-hectare and 10-percent-canopy thresholds.

This methodological choice creates a perverse incentive: a state that replaces natural forest with commercial plantations can show an increase in “forest cover” in the ISFR, even though the ecological value of the landscape has been dramatically diminished. This has implications for climate change accounting, biodiversity conservation, and the credibility of India’s international commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

International Frameworks: How Other Countries Distinguish Forests

Several international frameworks explicitly distinguish between natural forests and plantations:

• Brazil’s forest-carbon accounting: Brazil differentiates between primary forests, secondary forests, and planted forests in its national greenhouse gas inventory, recognising that each category has a different carbon profile and ecological value.
• EU Carbon Removal Certification: The European Union’s proposed Carbon Removal Certification Framework distinguishes between afforestation of degraded land (which generates genuine carbon removal) and the maintenance of existing forests (which prevents carbon release). This framework implicitly treats natural forests and plantations differently.
• IPCC Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (GPG-LULUCF) recommends that countries disaggregate their forest data by forest type, management regime, and ecological condition — a level of granularity that India’s ISFR does not currently provide.

Way Forward: Strengthening Forest Governance

• Revised FSI methodology: The FSI should adopt a classification system that distinguishes between natural forests, managed forests, plantations, orchards, and urban tree cover. This would provide a more accurate picture of India’s ecological wealth and enable more targeted conservation policies.
• Higher-resolution monitoring: Complementing LISS-III satellite data with higher-resolution imagery (from satellites such as Cartosat or commercial providers) and ground-truthing surveys would improve the accuracy of forest cover assessments.
• Tighter leasing guidelines: The leasing provision under the Van Adhiniyam 2023 should be accompanied by clear restrictions on the types of forestry activities permitted, mandatory biodiversity impact assessments, and mechanisms for community consultation and consent.
• Independent forest monitoring: An independent body — analogous to the Comptroller and Auditor General for public finances — could provide independent assessments of forest cover, ecological quality, and governance compliance, reducing the potential for bureaucratic or political manipulation of forest data.
• Alignment with international standards: India should align its forest accounting methodology with IPCC guidelines and international best practices, ensuring that its forest data is credible, comparable, and useful for climate change mitigation planning.

Conclusion

India’s forests are a national asset of incalculable value — for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, water security, livelihoods, and cultural identity. However, the governance framework for forests — from measurement methodology to legal regulation to institutional oversight — requires significant strengthening. The headline statistic that India has the world’s 9th-largest forest area and the 3rd-highest net annual gain masks critical concerns about forest quality, ecological integrity, and the adequacy of monitoring and governance mechanisms. For UPSC aspirants, forest governance is a cross-cutting theme that connects environment (GS-III), governance (GS-II), and geography (GS-I), and understanding its nuances — particularly the distinction between tree cover and ecological forest — is essential for answering Mains questions with analytical depth.

Source: UPSC Essentials, The Indian Express — March 2026. Content rewritten and analysed for UPSC preparation by Civils Gyani — Empowering Future Officers.

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