New Delhi, Mar 24 (PTI) Degraded land in the country increased to 97.84 million hectares in 2018-19 from 96.32 million hectares in 2011-13, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
Responding to a query on the issue of land desertification and forest degradation, Minister of State for Environment Ashwini Kumar Choubey also said the total forest cover of the country has increased by 12,294 square kilometers during the last seven years.
“Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India, published by Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organisation, Ahmedabad, states that the land degradation in the country has increased to 97.84 million hectares in 2018-19 from 96.32 million hectares in 2011-13.
“The India State of Forest Report (ISFR)-2021 states that the total forest cover of the country has increased by 12,294 square kilometers during the last seven years,” he said in a written response.
According to the figures shared by the minister, in the year 2018-19, the state with maximum land desertification was Rajasthan followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Out of the 97.84 million hectare of desertified land, approximately 45 million hectare land was found degraded in these three states alone.
While Rajasthan accounted for 21.23 million hectare of desertified land, Maharashtra had 14.3 million hectares and Gujarat had 1.02 million hectares of degraded land.
Listing out the measures taken to restore the desertified land, Choubey said the National Afforestation and Eco-development Board (NAEB) is implementing National Afforestation Programme (NAP) for ecological restoration of degraded forests and adjoining areas through people’s participation.
An amount of Rs 203.95 crore has been released to the states to treat area of 37,110 hectares during last three years and current year under NAP.
Projects are taken to check land degradation under the National Mission on Himalayan Studies (NMHS) through community-based plantation towards land reclamation, land greening through afforestation and plantation towards watershed management, he said.
“The total area on which land restoration activities have been conducted under NMHS, during 2016-17- 2021-22, is 955.9 ha with a budget of Rs 14.24 crore, the MoS said.
He said under the Green India Mission, which aims at protecting, restoring and enhancing India’s forest cover by means of plantation activities in forest and non-forest areas, Rs 594.28 crore has been released since 2015-16 to 15 states — Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Manipur, Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Sikkim, West Bengal, and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir for creation of plantation over an area of 1,17,503 hectare.
PTI AG SRY
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.