Hello again friends! This article deals with India's commitment to a better Climate.

As part of its effort to improve forest cover and to soak up climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions, the government in India has an unlikely partner – the Indian Army.

At the UN climate conference in Paris last December, India made enlarging and improving its forest cover a central part of its pledge on fighting climate change.

One of the many agencies – apart from the forest department – the government has recruited to carry out the work of forest improvement is a part of the Indian army known as the Eco Task Force (ETF).

According to India?s Ministry of Defence, units of the ETF have, over the last 30 years, already planted 65 million trees across the country. The ETF is also involved in rehabilitating degraded forests, conserving soils and managing water resources.

Forests act as a vital carbon sink, soaking up quantities of climate-changing carbon dioxide. When forests are destroyed, the stored CO2 is released into the atmosphere, adding to emissions of greenhouse gases and further exacerbating the problem of climate change.

Carbon sink

The total amount of CO2 equivalent at present stored in India?s forests is estimated to be more than 7 billion tonnes. As part of its commitment to meeting the targets put forward in Paris to fight climate change, India plans to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

Carbon dioxide equivalency is a simplified way to put emissions of various greenhouse gases on a common footing by expressing them in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide that would have the same global warming effect (usually over a century).

Latest statistics contained in the Indian State of Forest Report indicate that the country has a total of just over 7 million square kilometers of forest cover – more than 21% of its geographical area. The government says it plans to increase this figure to 33%.

In the first year, there is ground preparation and trees are planted. In the second year, a tree count is carried out and dead saplings are replaced. At the end of five years of monitoring developments, the area is handed over to the forest department.

At one ETF site in the Himalayan foothills in the north-east of the country, near the border separating the states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, patches of forest are spread across a landscape dotted mainly with paddy fields and small clusters of houses. Villagers cut trees for firewood, and have also cleared stretches of forest for farming.

But, thanks to the efforts of a battalion of ETF soldiers, the area has seen a complete transformation, with degraded forest land now returned to an area of rich biodiversity.

Land parcels

The land parcels vary in size and condition. The government?s forest department is consulted throughout the rehabilitation process – selecting species to be planted, helping raise awareness among local villagers of the importance of forest conservation, and dealing with flooding and other problems. Forest department personnel also help train the army units in forest conservation and management.

The scheme – jointly implemented by the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change – was the idea of Dr. Norman Borlaug, the American Nobel laureate and biologist who is often referred to as the father of the green revolution. The scheme was later taken up by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi.

Thank you for reading the article! I hope it was informativeJ

 Image and information source:http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/05/31/how-indian-soldiers-are-fighting-climate-change/