'Developmental threat' single-biggest threat to forests: Ramesh

With extensive debate raging on the issue of delay in approval and implementation of projects in ecologically-sensitive areas, Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh today said the “single-biggest” threat to the country’s green cover was a “developmental threat”.

“Forests not only face the existential threat from encroachments…but are also facing what is interestingly becoming perhaps the single-biggest threat to Indian forests, which I call the developmental threat,” said Ramesh at a seminar organised here by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce.

Speaking in the presence of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, Ramesh defended his stance on environmental clearances and said that with India on a high growth trajectory, “what cannot be managed is this growth dynamic”.

“Area after area and forest after forest, this is becoming the critical choice,” added Ramesh. Agreeing with Ostrom, who had earlier said the “institutional monoculture syndrome” should be avoided, the minister said there was “danger of institutional monoculture when it comes to dealing with the problems of common property resources like forests”.

Questioning the “theology” since 1952 that one-third of India should be under forest cover, Ramesh said there was a need to change the debate from the quantity of forests to the quality of forests. He also said 40 per cent of the country’s 70 million hectares of forests was open, degraded forest.

The minister further said the government was revisiting the Indian Forests Act of 1927.