UN questions India's forest cover data over lack of transparency & clarity

India had submitted data to access potential funds from global carbon trade under Paris Agreement after 2020

Doubts have been raised by a UN body over India’s claims that its forest cover has been increasing steadily for years. Questions have been raised by experts of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at a time when future claims of increase and enrichment of India’s forest cover could lead to potentially millions of dollars of easy income annually once the Paris Agreement is implemented. The global agreement envisions setting up a global mechanism for countries to trade in the greenhouse gas emissions avoided by either growing more forests, enriching existing ones or reducing the existing rate of deforestation in a country. It is called REDD+. 

Indian government has for more than two decades domestically claimed an increase in the forest-cover due to its ‘sustainable forest management’ policies. It also argued strongly at the UN climate change forums for setting up the REDD+ mechanism to earn carbon revenues from this claimed increase in forest cover. 

But when the Indian government submitted data supporting this forest-cover increase, it came in for criticism. Business Standard further checked the data submitted to the UN against the biennial State of Forest reports for last 18 years to verify the numbers for forest cover submitted to the UN. It also reviewed other reports submitted earlier to the UN citing forest cover and emission numbers. This included the first and the second National Communications to the UN, the first Biennial Update Report and the draft second Biennial Update Report. The numbers submitted to the UN in its latest report that came in under criticism do not match. The review also showed that the forest cover numbers for previous years have been repeatedly revised, at times particularly for submission to the UN. These revisions lead to a wide-range of changes in the data ranging from downward revision of 6,732 square kilometers in one year to an increase of forest cover by 13,083 square kilometres for another year.

The revisions showed up as increase in forest cover between certain periods that are practically and ecologically not possible. 

The Union environment, forests and climate change minister’s office and other officials did not respond to detailed emailed queries pertaining to these wide-ranging revisions and the submissions to the UN that drew criticism. 

An official speaking on condition of anonymity said special forest-cover estimation exercises had been carried out solely for the purpose of the report to the UN and the numbers reflected in the report were not out of any of the revisions made to forest-cover data made available domestically at different times over last 18 years.

Report to the UN

As a first step towards accessing the potential fund flows under REDD+ countries are required to set a baseline level of greenhouse emissions being emitted due to deforestation or prevented from escaping into the atmosphere by conserving and growing forests. This is referred to as the Forest Reference Level or FRL. Calculating the FRL requires countries to map how their forest covers have changed over time and then estimate change in emissions sequestered due to this change in forest cover. 

It is this FRL report to the UN, containing data on changes to the forest-cover and consequent greenhouse gas emissions,  that came in under criticism.

India submitted forest-cover and forest-cover change data for three points in time - 2000, 2004 and 2008. Based on these data points the government projected the level of greenhouse gas emissions it is preventing from escaping into the atmosphere on average annually. 

But the UN found its data questionable, lacking transparency and not in accordance with the UN regulations. 

Responding to the FRL report India submitted, the UN expert panel asked searching questions on how the data had been generated. Based on these queries, the Indian government revised its submission but it has still fallen short of the levels of transparency UN asked for, records show. The experts in their review have concluded, “The data and information used by India in constructing its FRL are partially transparent and not complete and therefore not fully in accordance with the guidelines contained (in the UN decisions).”

Detailing out the reasons it believed India had not been completely transparent with its data, the experts said, “The wealth of information and data available in the country was not properly made available for the reproduction of the FRL and suggested that India either download the information to an external server or provide links to the relevant publications for easy and public access. India indicated in the modified submission that all relevant documents are publicly available, but no explicit information was provided on how to access the data and/or information. The AT (assessment team) considers that the absence of this information in the modified submission does not allow for the reconstruction of the FRL, thus compromising the completeness of the submission.”

The nature of these international reviews under the UN does not permit a more probing inquiry by the experts. They are not allowed to look for evidence or data beyond that provided by country representatives. The Indian government did not submit links to the State of Forest Reports to the experts. It is in the biennially produced State of Forest reports that the government originally cites the forest cover data. 

Business Standard reviewed these reports and found the numbers submitted to the UN were not from its official biennial surveys - the only source of forest cover data produced by the government. It also emerged that the government of India has provided the UN contradictory trends for greenhouse gas emissions avoided by conserving forests. Additionally, the review showed India does not have a stable data series to cite for the changes in the forest cover. 
 

Governments have been repeatedly revising the forest cover numbers for previous years due to either ‘technical reasons’ or for technological upgradations, or in the name of refinement of data for submissions to the UN. Different set of numbers for forest cover and change in forest cover for the same years have been claimed at different times in different reports (see table).

Why the numbers keep changing

While finalising every new biennial survey of forest cover, it turns out, the government ends up revising last report’s forest cover figures as well - calling it a correction for ‘interpretational errors”. This revision ends up changing the forest cover for particular years by a wide range. It led to reduction in forest-cover by 517 square kilometres for one particular year and an increase of forest cover by 13,083 square kilometres in another. 

Then, a technological change - shifting to completely digitised and satellite-based imagery, rendered it impossible to compare data of pre-2000 period with that after 2000. After saying so, the government regardless made the comparison. The comparison showed that the forest cover had jumped from 637,293 square kilometers in 1998 to 675,538 square kilometers in 2000 - a whopping 38,245 square kilometers of forests had been added in just two years - an ecological impossibility under India’s conditions. 

To top this confusion, a new back-series was drawn up in 2009 for data up to 2000 (the year satellite imagery was used for all Indian assessment for the first time) yet again - this time for another technological upgradation in the methodology. The changes ranged from a 6,732 square kilometre reduction of forest cover for the year 2000 to a 13,083 square kilometre increase in forest cover in 2004. 

Depending on which set of data one takes - the original, the biennially-revised for ‘interpretational errors’ or the set of revisions done yet again for technological and methodological changes, or the one provided to the UN in 2018, the story of India’s forest cover change gets altered. Sometimes, rather dramatically. 

Take the three critical points in time that mattered for India’s FRL report to the UN which made the experts raise their eyebrows. 

The Indian government indicated to the UN that its forest cover increased between 1994-2000 by roughly 7,800 square kilometers. But it did not disclose that the move from manual to satellite imagery-based surveys meant it had long ago domestically admitted that the two specific years’ data was incomparable and the real change in forest cover pre- and post-2000 period could not possibly be calculated to reflect reality.

The ministry official said this number had been generated some years back particularly for the UN report after carrying out a year-long project to have a satellite-based forest cover number for 1994 - when the government did not originally use satellite imagery. 

The area it informed the UN that was covered under forests in 2000, 2004 and 2008 has also never been reported in either the original assessments or the revised assessments made available to the citizens.

India also told the UN that the most latest revision of the forest-cover data it had done specially for the report to the UN led it to conclude that in 2004 India had 69,0827 square kilometers of forests. It had first estimated the forest cover for the year 2004 to be 677,088 square kilometres, revised it two years later to be 690,171 square kilometres but then left it untouched in the methodological revision of the dataset carried out in 2009 that dramatically changed all other numbers. 

The revised numbers submitted to the UN, which it did not change even upon being questioned, show very high  increase in forest cover between pre-2000 and 2000 levels and then again between 2000-04 levels. The way the formula for calculating the FRL was constructed, these helped the government peg the the emissions it was saving from maintaining forests also higher. The same trend is not visible in more recent years (2016-10).

Forestry-based carbon trade

The global trade in greenhouse gas emissions from forestry and land-use change under the Paris Agreement is predicated on developed countries paying developing countries to avoid emissions. The rich nations can then claim credit for reducing emissions instead of doing the same in their domestic arenas. 

Emission reduction in high-energy consuming and developed economies can cost much more than paying for emission reduction efforts in poorer countries. But this ‘carbon trade’, particularly when based on forestry and change of land-use, has for long faced criticism from several experts. Part of the criticism has arisen over years from such weak land-use and forestry databases across developing countries and the ability of governments to tweak numbers. 

The Indian official Business Standard spoke to on condition of anonymity said the FRL report was a first attempt and already work was in progress to revise the methodology and the report yet again for the UNFCCC. He said the UN allowed such revisions to the FRL report on a continuous basis. He acknowledged the deep scrutiny the first report had undergone at the UN but said such scrutiny was good as it permitted the government of India to also do better. 

Critics have warned that this kind of uncertainty could lead to trading in non-existent ‘avoided greenhouse gas emissions’. This, they have warned, would merely help developed countries getting away by claiming emission reductions on paper at low cost while developing countries get some money out of it and leave the ability of this mechanism to really fight climate change doubtful. 

Over time governments of countries, wishing to earn money from increasing or improving their forest covers are expected to draw more granular regional-level baselines which are yet more amenable to questions over their veracity. 

At the recently concluded negotiations for the rulebook to the Paris Agreement, differences over how the global carbon markets would function in future remained unresolved. The detailed rules for the trade could not be finalised. Even as the rest of the rulebook was adopted by almost 200 countries, they decided to take at least another year to set the rules for the trading mechanism.