India’s forest policy, that brings clarity to India’s forest laws and guides implementation on the ground, is almost three decades old, and a lot of it is dead wood. The Bhopal-based Indian Institute of Forest Management reviewed the National Forest Policy of 1988 and brought out a new draft forest policy in 2016. Tree cover usually refers to patches of trees outside the forest area that have traditionally been hard to map. For those not paying attention, it may seem like another fluffy slogan, but it actually suggests a deeper shift, in what else, the government’s forest policy. In the 1952 forest policy, the first for independent India, the goal was to have 33% of the country’s area under forests.

Source: Hindustan Times October 06, 2017 09:00 UTC