Important Government Data
- India’s total forest cover is around 24% of the country’s total geographical area.
- The Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Management Act was passed in 2016
- The Center gives 90% of the CAF money to the states and retains 10% for itself. India plans to increase forest area to 33% of the total geographic area by 2030.
- In 2019, 68 developmental projects were carried out by diverting forest areas.
Compensatory Afforestation
The process of planting trees and developing land into a forest area is called afforestation. Compensatory Afforestation is the process of indirect afforestation activities that aim to compensate for the destruction of forest land done to certain activities that contradicts the purpose of afforestation. The process works through certain guidelines that state in case of diversion of forest land for non-forest use for any project purpose, the project authorities have to provide funds to the forest department of the respective state to compensate for this loss of forest land. The funds will be used for afforestation of any other non-forest land of equal area. In case of non-availability of suitable land for forest –use, the fund should be used to improve a degraded forest land of double the size.