By Shatakshi Gawade
One lakh trees and shrubs were felled in protected forests in Uttar Pradesh in July 2024 for the Kanwar pilgrimage. Over 98,000 trees have been deemed acceptable collateral for mining in Chhattisgarh’s biodiversity-rich Hasdeo Aranya (see page 41), according to media reports. Activists, however, have said that this is an undercount, with over 3.5 lakh trees felled. At the eco-sensitive zone of Delhi ridge, 1,100 trees have been cut. Mumbai has lost close to 22,000 trees between 2018 and 2023 to road and metro work. A spate of tree felling for ‘development’ projects such as riverfront beautification and road widening have kept Pune activists up in arms during a year of unbearable summer temperatures that have ravaged India, and made life unbearable for people living in villages and urbania.
At a time when chest-thumping is the order of the day with claims of millions of trees being planted (with few if any updates on the fate of such initiatives), not a week goes by without depressing news of fresh tree felling from the distant corners of India.
Our best bet at this time of catastrophic climate change is to protect existing forests, together with the exquisitely adapted trees that have managed to survive near human settlements and in varying ecosystems. Photo: Rajesh Chaudhary.
The value of trees is unquestionable. Over a 24-hour period, a tree produces more oxygen than it uses, making it a net producer of oxygen that human and non-human animals need to survive. Of the various estimates, one notes that of 9.5 tonnes of air that a human breathes in a year, oxygen is about 740 kg, which is roughly equivalent to seven to eight mature trees. Another study found that one mature beech makes oxygen enough for 10 people for a year. And since trees utilise carbon for their functioning, trees and forests are vital terrestrial carbon sinks. Depending on the species, forests can store between 10 and a 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare, helping mitigate climate change. Trees also provide or help maintain habitats for over 80 per cent biodiversity on land. Forests help regulate the water cycle, and are sponges, helping soak rainwater that feeds rivers and wells, while preventing soil from being washed away. As natural forested ecosystems vanish under the weight of developmental plans, a tragic consequence is the loss of quality of agricultural land that soon gets categorised as ‘degraded’. The same holds true for forest lands, which wither when human development ambitions tatter their ecological fabric.
Even from an economic standpoint, our best bet at a time when the climate crisis promises to deliver a series of catastrophes, is to protect existing wild and urban forests, together with the exquisitely adapted trees that have managed to survive near human settlements and in varying ecosystems including grasslands and riparian zones, which human technology cannot hope to replicate in the false hope that new human-made ecosystems will replace the services delivered to us without cost by nature.
India has a history of strong, non-violent defence of trees. The 18th Century Chipko movement in Rajasthan by the Bishnoi community to protect their precious khejri trees is still a guiding light. The now-famous Chipko Andolan of the 1970s succeeded in stopping commercial logging, which helped protect Himalayan forests, and thus local people’s livelihoods, and culture. The Silent Valley Movement in Kerala succeeded in protecting the evergreen forest from being drowned by a hydroelectric project, leading to the notification of the magical Silent Valley National Park in 1986. More recently, on the international front, the Supreme Court of Columbia in 2018 recognised the Amazon, where deforestation rates had increased by 44 per cent from 2015 to 2016, as an “entity subject of rights” – giving the rainforest the same legal rights as a human.
Indian laws do have provisions against tree cutting, but these are routinely thwarted by creative interpretation of iconic legislations such as The Indian Forests Act, 1927, the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. If anything, state Acts for tree protection, such as Uttar Pradesh’s Protection of Trees Act, the Maharashtra (Urban Areas) Protection and Preservation of Trees Act, 1975, and the Goa, Daman and Diu, Preservation of Trees, Act, 1984, have suffered greater violations.
In his enduring work Should Trees Have Standing? Christopher D. Stone argued in 1972 that though environmental entities are not a person like you and I, the recognition of personhood should extend to natural entities that stand to be harmed by man, such as marshlands, rivers, and forests and trees. Take some time out of your day to understand local and national laws, and become an advocate to protect your neighbourhood trees.
