India's bursting population has put a strain on India's forest cover . Justify with suitable example. No useless answers
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Explanation:
On February 12, the Indian government celebrated a 1% increase in the country’s green cover. “Despite...tremendous population and pressures of livestock on our forests, India has been able to preserve and expand its forest wealth,” said Harsh Vardhan, the Union minister of environment, forest and climate change, while releasing the State of Forests Report 2017.
The biennial report stated that in 2017, India’s forest cover increased to 7,08,273 sq km, or 21.5 % of the country’s geographical area, as against 7,01,495 sq km two years ago. This was the net gain made over two years as while forests were cut down in some areas, they emerged in others.
The tree cover outside forests also increased from 92,572 sq km to 93,815 sq km in the two years, says the report.
Though Vardhan called the increase in green cover an achievement and credited the government’s key green schemes for it, a closer look at the report shows that the real state of Indian forests is not that rosy.
Details of the report show that the net gain in India’s forest cover could actually be masking massive deforestation as the areas that have turned green are not necessarily natural forests, but plantations. Data in the report shows that between 2015 and 2017 over 21,000 sq km of standing forests were completely denuded. This is 10 times the area of Delhi and Mumbai put together. However, in the same period, more than 24,000 sq km of completely denuded lands turned green.