India too has been adding more green cover than ever. Higher CO2 in atmosphere leads to faster growth of forests. But more important factor is urbanization for India. As people move to cities the need to cut down trees goes down.
You'll read about some 70 year old woman/man in an obscure village who's reforested thousands of acres on their own, or resuscitated a lake (e.g. the lake guy in Bengaluru).
But there's little effort to harness their knowledge in a systematic way, add knowledge from others into the knowledge bank, do peer review, and then systematically dispense the knowledge in the form of a kit to environmentalists and bureaucrats across the country. China did this, and that's why they're so successful.
Because I know of several organisations doing this and are organising projects state-wide (they focused in Bihar and surroundings).
The number of planted tree grows but benefit not seen, except for the group doing it. People are too into feelings, by seeing the headlines they need to feel good that's why so much publicity is needed, so many banners everywhere, ads in news-paper spending billions by gov.
If you don't, readers of this comment are going to assume there aren't any, and you're just doing an ego-defense of Indian "capability".
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If you seek evidence you must put good faith efforts in finding the evidence or evidence of absence before asking others to waste time nullifying your claims for which you have produced no evidence.
> India State of Forest Reports (ISFR)
Published every 2 years shows strong growth in India's forests. Though their methodology, methods of calculation have been questions the general trend of forestation is not questioned by anyone.
Indian government has had many programs for forestation. I am not familiar with all regions but I am specifically aware of western Ghats in India. These very ghats were once nearly destroyed by "experts" writing in "peer reviewed" journals who introduced non-native fast growth trees in the region as replacement for native trees. These trees such as Acacia etc. were very detrimental for local wildlife and rest of the ecosystem.
While I am skeptical of government initiatives in general, they have worked for India's western ghats pretty well mostly due to urbanization. These initiatives pay local communities and farmers to grow and plant trees. A lot of scams happen and money gets stolen. Survival rate of trees remains at 30% instead of expected 60%. Trees planted are often of only 3-4 varieties and sometimes non-native but all things considered it works out positively.
Environmentalists and bureaucrats are epitome of evil in India. Where I lived in India, the forest officials themselves hunted the wild game and gifted it to environmentalists and vice versa. Need exotic meat to eat ? The forest officer or the local wildlife activist is the guy who can make it happen. Want to eat Olive Ridley Turtle eggs ? The officer incharge of their conservation can sell it to you.
India's forests, rivers, beaches have been inhabited by their native people for thousands of years. Over years they did figure out what works and what does not. For example ban on fishing during breeding season was a traditional system. Not hunting in "God's forest" was essentially a wildlife preserve. Religion, way of life and sustainability was part of the society in an organic way. Need to build a checkdam seasonally ? we had a local process for that. The dam was built on new moon day of X month and taken down with the first rain etc.
I am not romantacizing the poor people's life in India. Their systems had problems. Unscrupulous people took advantage of religious beliefs, some systems were based on exploitation etc. etc. But with growth in population and urbanization required a seamless transition of these traditional systems into governance structures of local bodies.
That did not happen because of Indian Government. They adopted the British I*S system and airdropped young and corrupt idiots as the overlords of the areas. Activists who wrote papers in "peer reviewed" journals then wrote reports on how these babus gotta civilize the villagers and put in new system in place.
Once you ban hunting entirely, the hunters go back to their life and poachers take over. Hunters understand concept of wild life preserves. Poachers don't. Hunters now out of business don't have incentive to stop poaching. Before you know it the poachers and babus have formed a nexus to sell game meat.
Same goes for trees. Government banks cutting down trees entirely as if it is murder. Entire wood logging industry is killed off under the sheer weight of red tape. Since I come from wood logging family, the red tape meant we could not sell our trees profitably anymore. I had to look for altnerative occupation for myself and sell the land to wood mafia who now use the land for a "pretend forest" while they actually steal wood from national parks and public lands.
For residential, solar + batteries straight up beats legacy infra on cost, and with the upcoming cheap sodium batteries, things are only going to get better.
Either way, you need to fit the needs of the same number of people. If they're in a dense city near everything they need, they use less space.
Policies to limit urban sprawl just an expensive way to create more sprawl elsewhere - and roads to it.
It is. I have seen the data
But I live in a rural area of New Zealand and I also see how people moving onto farm land greatly increases tree cover (not forrest) and biodiversity, I assume because people plant gardens, and closely husband them
In New Zealand farmers are grossly damaging to the environment. They clear everything and plant mono cultures and treat water as exhaustable and rivers as waste dumps
So yes people in cities is a good thing, but people in rural areas are good, to