When a forest ranger named Sundaresh died on February 18 from burn wounds sustained while battling a forest fire in Karnataka’s Anibeedu forest’s Hassan district, these uncontrolled forest fires added to the nation’s already poor air quality. For the past ten years, forest fires have wreaked havoc in many areas of India, severely harming forest ecosystems, reducing biodiversity, and affecting the livelihoods of populations that depend on the forests for their subsistence.
Source: The Guardian
By 2030, India has committed to growing enough trees and forests to absorb 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Also, it has promised to repair 26 million hectares of degraded forests by the same year, although it is unlikely to follow through on these commitments unless forest fires are properly controlled. According to data from the Forest Survey of India’s (FSI) Status of Forest 2021 report, between 2013 and 2021, India’s total forest cover expanded by 0.48 percent, but the number of forest fires that were identified increased by 186 percent.
According to a 2019 FSI research, approximately 36% of India’s forests are at risk for wildfires, and 36% of those are extremely vulnerable. According to an examination of data from several Lok Sabha answers, the support for fire-fighting funding released by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) decreased by over 26% from 2016 to 2021, despite an increase in forest fires across India in recent years.
Source: WION
It is significant to note that India’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) does not recognise forest fires as natural hazards because in India, the majority of fires are intentionally started by people, typically for agricultural purposes, as a result of simple negligence, or are intentionally stoked. As a result, these fires are classified as anthropogenic hazards.
The good news is that India’s methods for monitoring forest fires have significantly improved, and shortly, the National Disaster Management Authority will be responsible for managing forest fires (NDMA). However, if the Union government is serious about achieving its climate and biodiversity goals, it is crucial that it not only monitors and understands forest fires using satellite data to successfully manage them in a warmer world, but also invests in the forest department’s fire-fighting capacity and increases the involvement of local communities in forest conservation and in mitigating forest fires.
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