Question

33% of total land area of a country should be under forests. Justify

Answer 1

Ya Very true sentence
33% of total land area of a country should be under forests as forests play a major role in a man's life. Forests area is declining at a much faster rate as compared to bieng planted. There are very harmful gases in the atmosphere and we must neutralise it by planting trees and they will produce oxygen. So there must be 33% or more than 33% area under forest cover

Answer 2

e is apparently no scientific basis for why the forest cover should be 33 % for the plains and 66% in the mountains as enunciated in the 1988 National Forest Policy. Optimal forest cover for different landscapes will naturally vary depending on current land use patterns, extent of unculturable wastes, mountains / deserts lying above the tree line, climax grassland systems and so forth. So, for example, after a detailed study of land use and availability, it was concluded that Himachal Pradesh state can at best have only 35% of its geographical area under ‘forests’, as against the policy stipulation of 66% for mountain states (HP Forest Policy, 2005). Similarly, more than half of the geographical area of J&K is above the tree line / or in cold deserts. Where is the question of 66% forest cover in that state?

What apparently led to this figure of 33% was the belief (in the absence of satellite based forest cover assessments at that time) that most well forested countries in the world have around one third of their area under forest cover. And perhaps that is why it was adopted for India too.

The other related question is how a country’s forest cover is distributed over its landscape? Ideally, each of our states need to find out and have an optimal forest cover depending on their local factors and land use patterns. Therefore, some states like in the Himalayas and with lower density of people, will tend to have higher percentage of forest cover than the stipulated 33 or 66%. Example, Arunanchal Pradesh has around 90% forest cover. But we can never expect Punjab and Haryana to be anywhere near 33% forest cover.