India has restored 21.7 million hectares of degraded and deforested land between 2011 and 2020, according to the country’s second progress report on the Bonn Challenge released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Wednesday.

This includes restoration through planted forests, natural regeneration, silviculture, agroforestry, and mangrove restoration.

The Bonn Challenge is a global initiative launched in 2011, under which more than 70 countries have committed to restoring 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes by 2020, with an additional target of 350 million hectares by 2030.

India had pledged to restore 13 million hectares with an additional eight million hectares by 2030. This was revised to 26 million hectares by 2030 as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 14th United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification held in 2019 in India.

Between 2011 and 2017, India restored 9.8 million hectares of land, according to the first Bonn Challenge progress report.

The report attributed the progress to the combination of national schemes such as the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, the Green India Mission, the National Afforestation Programme, and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, along with dedicated state-level greening efforts.

Land degradation occurs due to habitat loss, exploitation of natural resources, invasive alien species, climate change, desertification, and pollution. This affects ecosystems and their capacity to support biodiversity and communities that depend on them for their livelihood.

How states fared

Telangana topped the list of states that restored the highest land area at 4.18 million hectares, through an agroforestry push of over 3.6 million hectares. Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh were among the other states leading restoration efforts, according to the report.

It was also estimated that the restoration efforts generated 1,224.51 million man-days of jobs.

In India, 1.45 million hectares, or 0.44 per cent of the total geographical area, experienced degradation between 2011-13 and 2018-19, while 97.85 million hectares, or 29.77 per cent of the country’s geographical area, are affected by land degradation and desertification.

About 461.14 million tonnes of carbon (343.66 million tonnes, accounting for plantation mortality) were estimated to be sequestered due to the restoration, according to the report. Land Use, Land-use change, and the forestry sector are among the key avenues for sequestering the planet-warming carbon dioxide.

The reporting of the restoration data is based on information provided by the states and UTs gathered by the IUCN and MoEFCC, specifically from state forest departments and the Department of Land Resources.