Ghaziabad gets ready to plant 1.1 million trees today; but no increase in forest cover since 2017
Ghaziabad district aims to plant 1.1 million trees in annual drive. Despite past efforts, forest cover stagnant since 2017. Government plans 365 million trees in UP.
The Ghaziabad district is all set for its annual plantation drive on Saturday and has received a target of about 1.1 million trees. The target assumes importance given that the forest cover of the district has not shown an increase since 2017, according to the data compiled by Forest Survey of India (FSI).
This year, the Uttar Pradesh government is planning to plant 365 million trees across Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, said its information department on Friday. The government has assigned plantation targets to all 18 divisions and tasked them with carrying out plantation near river banks, ponds and roadsides, among other sites.
On the same lines, different departments in Ghaziabad will also carry out massive plantation drives on Saturday.
Despite undertaking plantation drives on such a large scale every year, the district’s forest cover has shown no increase since 2017, said officials quoting FSI data.
The 2017 State of the Forest report by FSI indicated that the district had a geographical area of 1,179 square kilometres and its forest cover stood at 2.21% of the total geographic area. The 2019 FSI report indicated that the forest cover showed a negative growth and stood at 2.14%.
In the last FSI report in 2021, the forest cover stood constant at 2.14%.
The FSI states that all lands more than 1 hectare in area, with a tree canopy density of more than 10%, including tree orchards, bamboo, palms etc., occurring within recorded forest and other government lands, private community or institutional lands, are included in the assessment of forest cover.
Over the years, the district has planted millions of trees to increase the green cover. According to figures of the forest department, about 704,129 trees were planted in 2020-21, 1.1 million in 2021-22 and 1.2 million in 2022-23 as part of the annual plantation drive.
“The departments are just carrying out plantation drives in order to set records and meet targets. There is no focus on maintenance and protection of these saplings later on. Further, apart from the forest department, trees are also procured privately and huge amounts are spent on this. There has to be an audit and a high-level inquiry that after spending so much money and resources, why has the forest cover not increased in seven years?” said Akash Vashishtha, a resident and an environment lawyer.
Rajendra Tyagi, former councillor and social activist, said massive felling of trees has taken place in Ghaziabad to make way for infrastructure projects over the past decade or so.
“On one hand, the government insists on planting all these trees, on the other hand, it approved the felling of 112,000 trees/shrubs along the Upper Ganga Canal. This will considerably reduce the forest cover. Further, there is hardly any land available in the district for compensatory afforestation. The afforestation exercise against felled trees takes place in far flung districts. So, the forest cover in the district will not increase,” Tyagi said.
Isha Tiwari, divisional forest officer, could not be reached for comment on Friday.
“We expect an increase in forest cover in the 2024 FSI report, which is yet to be released. The survival rate of our plantation is about 90%. On Saturday, we expect to plant about 1,1 million trees,” said Abhinav Gopal, Ghaziabad’s chief development officer.