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Who goes there?: What we’re getting wrong about afforestation

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“Plant a tree” is a carelessly worded slogan, botanists will tell you. And yet it’s an approach that persists. Across India, most afforestation programmes designed and promoted by governments continue to randomly plant and transplant saplings in areas where they have a negligible chance of surviving or contributing to the biosphere.

New developments — housing and infrastructure projects, roads, settlements — that cut across primary forests “make up for it” by “planting trees” elsewhere.

“Unfortunately there is lack of foresight when it comes to figuring out what needs to be done for these programmes to work,” said Manan Bhan, who specialises in the carbon accounting of global land-use change, with a PhD in the subject from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Austria.

Perhaps the most common mistake such programmes make is growing the wrong tree in the wrong place (the other big one is not tending to saplings in the crucial first two years).

It starts with the wrong terminology, says Bhan. We shouldn’t be looking at trees as generic and forests as swathes of any kind of mix, he adds. Rather than afforestation, which is far too generic, “we should be calling it ecological restoration, which involves not only getting forests back to places where they used to exist, but restoring other natural ecosystems such as scrublands and grasslands and other such elements.”

The Mysuru-based Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), for instance, has been working to restore degraded fragments in the Valparai plateau of the Anamalai Hills since 2001. Across about 100 hectares of degraded forest, the Foundation has planted more than 70,000 saplings from across more than 170 native rainforest tree species. These patches are regularly monitored, surveyed and studied.

“When a rainforest sapling that is typically shade-tolerant is planted in a degraded site, it may not survive,” said Divya Mudappa, a research scientist with NCF. “So, based on our understating of each of these species’ requirements, we optimise by selecting the right microhabitat within the sites. Regular monitoring in the first two years after planting also helps improve the chances of sapling survival and weed control.”

The crux of the matter is that a well-designed programme can restore ecosystems, says Bhan. “What one has to get right is the ecological foundation to restoration practice.”

Elsewhere in the country, some private individuals are “rewilding” by buying up tracts of farmland near reserves, weeding out the invasives and monocultures, and then just stepping back and letting nature do the rest. Over 23 years, naturalists Aditya Dicky Singh, 56, and his wife Poonam Singh, 53, have bought 50 acres of land in Bhadlav, abutting the Ranthambore tiger reserve in Rajasthan. Aside from eliminating invasives, they encourage natural restoration by building check dams wherever water naturally accumulates.

First, the toughest plants resurface: the grasses and thorny bushes. “The small bushes give way to bigger bushes, then the tougher plants like Amalta, which create an environment for the Anogeissus pendula, which is the climax species here. Once that comes up, the plot is headed towards becoming an Anogeissus forest,” said Aditya Singh.

This takes time, research, foresight and patience. It’s easier to just hand out saplings and take a feel-good photograph. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get the job done.


“Plant a tree” is a carelessly worded slogan, botanists will tell you. And yet it’s an approach that persists. Across India, most afforestation programmes designed and promoted by governments continue to randomly plant and transplant saplings in areas where they have a negligible chance of surviving or contributing to the biosphere.

New developments — housing and infrastructure projects, roads, settlements — that cut across primary forests “make up for it” by “planting trees” elsewhere.

“Unfortunately there is lack of foresight when it comes to figuring out what needs to be done for these programmes to work,” said Manan Bhan, who specialises in the carbon accounting of global land-use change, with a PhD in the subject from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Austria.

Perhaps the most common mistake such programmes make is growing the wrong tree in the wrong place (the other big one is not tending to saplings in the crucial first two years).

It starts with the wrong terminology, says Bhan. We shouldn’t be looking at trees as generic and forests as swathes of any kind of mix, he adds. Rather than afforestation, which is far too generic, “we should be calling it ecological restoration, which involves not only getting forests back to places where they used to exist, but restoring other natural ecosystems such as scrublands and grasslands and other such elements.”

The Mysuru-based Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), for instance, has been working to restore degraded fragments in the Valparai plateau of the Anamalai Hills since 2001. Across about 100 hectares of degraded forest, the Foundation has planted more than 70,000 saplings from across more than 170 native rainforest tree species. These patches are regularly monitored, surveyed and studied.

“When a rainforest sapling that is typically shade-tolerant is planted in a degraded site, it may not survive,” said Divya Mudappa, a research scientist with NCF. “So, based on our understating of each of these species’ requirements, we optimise by selecting the right microhabitat within the sites. Regular monitoring in the first two years after planting also helps improve the chances of sapling survival and weed control.”

The crux of the matter is that a well-designed programme can restore ecosystems, says Bhan. “What one has to get right is the ecological foundation to restoration practice.”

Elsewhere in the country, some private individuals are “rewilding” by buying up tracts of farmland near reserves, weeding out the invasives and monocultures, and then just stepping back and letting nature do the rest. Over 23 years, naturalists Aditya Dicky Singh, 56, and his wife Poonam Singh, 53, have bought 50 acres of land in Bhadlav, abutting the Ranthambore tiger reserve in Rajasthan. Aside from eliminating invasives, they encourage natural restoration by building check dams wherever water naturally accumulates.

First, the toughest plants resurface: the grasses and thorny bushes. “The small bushes give way to bigger bushes, then the tougher plants like Amalta, which create an environment for the Anogeissus pendula, which is the climax species here. Once that comes up, the plot is headed towards becoming an Anogeissus forest,” said Aditya Singh.

This takes time, research, foresight and patience. It’s easier to just hand out saplings and take a feel-good photograph. Unfortunately, that doesn’t get the job done.

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