Desertification claims 38,42,113 hectares of land in the NE region

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: Desertification of vast tracts of land in the Northeast region has become a major cause of concern. A total of 38,42,113 hectares of land in the NE is under desertification, of which Assam has the highest area of 8,34,530 hectares of land.

This data emerged in a reply by Minister of State in the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change Kirti Vardhan Singh in the Rajya Sabha during the ongoing budget session of the Parliament.

According to the statistics provided by the Union Minister, the country as a whole has a total of 9,78,54,851 hectares of land under desertification. Of this total, the NE region has 38,42,113 hectares of land facing desertification. The state-wise breakup in the NE region—Arunachal Pradesh has 2,00,683 hectares, Assam has 8,34,530 hectares, Manipur has 6,12,566 hectares, Meghalaya has 5,57,576, Mizoram has 2,75,827 hectares, Nagaland has 8,28,943 hectares, Sikkim has 84,610 hectares, and Tripura has an area of 4,47,378 hectares under desertification.

The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India is published by the Space Applications Centre (SAC), Indian Space Research Organisation, Ahmedabad, which provides the state-wise extent of land degradation and desertification in India. The Atlas serves as an important tool in the planning and implementation of schemes aimed at the restoration of land. An online portal has also been developed with the help of the Space Application Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, for the correlation of degraded land with the processes causing degradation.

A Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Land Management (CoE-SLM) has been set up at the Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Dehradun, to engage and enable parties at international, national, and local levels in addressing land degradation-related issues with an ultimate goal of degradation neutrality (LDN). It also aims at enhanced South-South cooperation, knowledge sharing, promotion of best practices, sharing of India’s experiences with cost-effective and sustainable land management strategies, developing ideas for transformative projects and programs, and capacity building.

In addition to these, the Ministry has been taking several initiatives through various afforestation-related schemes implemented by the ministry and other ministries, which aim at increasing and improving forest and tree cover and thereby combating desertification. The Ministry supports the States/UTs for various afforestation activities through the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for conservation, development, and promotion of forests under its major schemes, namely, the National Mission for a Green India (GIM) and the Forest Fire Protection & Management Scheme (FFPM).

Further, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) contributes to afforestation and consequently combatting desertification. In addition, state governments also implement various schemes for tree plantation/afforestation and addressing land degradation. Combating desertification and land degradation is a dynamic process, as the interplay between environmental conditions, human activities, and the impacts of land degradation can constantly change and thus requires regular monitoring and evolution of relevant adaptation and mitigation strategies.

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