Study group to be formed for working out LIFE-forest matrix: Env Minister

New Delhi, Jan 13 (IANS) Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, said on Thursday that a study group will be formed to explore how to improve forest cover and forest quality, incorporating the lifestyle change needed to combat climate change.

“This will be an internal study group – ministry level – that will further analyse how to increase qualitative forest and the LIFE mantra offered by the Prime Minister,” Yadav said while releasing the India State of Forest Report 2021 (ISFR-2021).

He was referring to LIFE — the lifestyle for environment — mantra floated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the annual climate change summit at Glasgow in November last year as an important action tool for combating climate change.

Yadav told IANS that LIFE, or the environment-friendly lifestyle as advocated by Modi on the global platform, naturally has components of increasing green cover, utilising green technology, turning to renewable energy and most importantly, adopting traditional Indian lifestyle that does not focus on increasing consumption, but is need-based.

“With all such steps, we are naturally looking at saving forests, increasing forest cover and tree cover,” the minister said, adding, “We will cull out actionable points from the ISFR 2021 report and then discuss how to incorporate better solutions.”

The ISFR-2021 has been brought out by the Forest Survey of India (FSI).

Earlier, while releasing the report, the minister expressed happiness over the fact that the present assessment reveals that 17 states/UTs have above 33 per cent of the geographical area under forest cover.

“The focus of the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not just to conserve the forests quantitatively, but to enrich them qualitatively as well,” he said.

The ISFR-2021 provides information on forest cover, tree cover, mangrove cover, growing stock, carbon stock in India’s forests, forest fire monitoring, forest cover in tiger reserve areas, above ground estimates of biomass using SAR data and climate change hotspots in Indian forests.

–IANS
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