India will add 20 million hectares to its forests in the next 10 years to help tackle the impact of climate change in a “big way”, Union Forest and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said Friday after unveiling the ambitious Green India Mission in Guwahati.
The Rs 44,000-crore mission will strive to bring about a fundamental shift in the mindset, from a traditional focus on increasing the quantity of forests to increasing the quality, Ramesh said. “More important than the huge sum of money we are going to spend on this mission is the redefining role of people and forests as partners and natural allies instead of as adversaries,” the minister said. Ramesh said while the on-going afforestation programmes have a target of adding 10 million hectares to the country’s forest cover in the next ten years, the mission would add another 10 million hectares. This will help speed up the process of removal of green house gases, he added. Stressing on the need for a credible mechanism to monitor progress of the mission, Ramesh said in the next three years, India would have two satellites dedicated exclusively to monitoring of forestry and green house gases on a real-time basis. “While we will have our dedicated satellite for monitoring green house gases in 2012, the forest monitoring satellite will be in place in 2013,” he said. Besides, the Indian National Network for Climate Change Assessment, involving over 250 scientists in 128 research institutions, will begin functioning from November.
