Losing Forest for Trees: On the CAG’s Audit of the Green India Mission
India does not seem to lack for promises to plant trees. What it seems to lack, apparently more significantly, is something else: functional forests.
This is the rather troubling conclusion to emerge from the latest performance audit of the Green India Mission (GIM) by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The mission was envisaged as one of the cornerstones of India’s climate action plan and was supposed to aim at nothing less than protecting, regenerating and enhancing forest and tree cover, improving ecological services, strengthening the livelihoods of forest dwellers and increasing India’s carbon sink potential. However, even after a significant period of time since implementation, the gap between ambitions on paper and the environmental results achieved on the ground is glaring.
But the most staggering statistic here is not the fact that the GIM did not reach its target. It is the extent to which the GIM fell short of its mark. The mission has fallen short by 97.57 per cent of the 2014 Cabinet approved 1.4 million-hectare target in terms of increasing forest cover, while it has fallen short of the 1.4 million-hectare quality of forest cover improvement target by 91.87 per cent.
The Problem With Counting the Work Instead of Measuring the Forest
The key point in the audit lies in recognizing that planting and forest regeneration are not synonymous concepts.
The CAG noted that 0.14793 million hectares had received treatment through GIM from 2015-16 to 2024-25 against a target of 2.8 million hectares in 2014. However, the important issue to note is what becomes of the landscape once the intervention is done. Has the vegetation survived? Have degraded ecosystems regenerated? Have biodiversity levels improved? Have ecosystem functions resumed? Has the landscape truly turned into a forest?
This audit made attempts to ascertain all of these issues instead of taking any administrative assertions for granted.
Working in collaboration with Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, the CAG studied 170 plantation sites located across nine states using satellite imagery and GIS and temporal vegetation data. Of the 153 plantations sites which were analyzed properly, tree cover change due to the GIM interventions could be observed in only 46 sites located in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Even out of these 46 sites, the KML area was 561.32 hectares, whereas the actual GIM intervention covered only 179.43 hectares.
A Plantation Is Not a Forest
Trees planted today do not amount to a forest tomorrow.
A forest is an ecological system made up of varying age groups of trees, understory, soil biota, hydrology, wildlife, carbon sequestration, regeneration, and interaction between organisms. A plantation can form a part of such a system, but it cannot always substitute for it.
Such a distinction is crucial in a nation struggling with issues such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, lack of water security and growing demands on its land resources.
India’s very own ambitions in the field of forest conservation also recognise this goal. The Green India Mission, in its initial proposal, aimed at increasing forest/tree cover in five million hectares and improving the quality of another five million hectares. It also hoped to get better benefits from ecosystem services, biodiversity, livelihoods, and carbon sequestration.
However, the implementation has seemingly moved towards a more administrative mindset: find some land, plant trees there, report the area and go ahead.
The Mission Was Underfunded — But That Is Only Half the Story
It will be unjust to analyse the audit solely as a case of governmental inadequacy without considering the financial challenges that were affecting the performance of GIM.
This argument is valid as well because it is tough to expect any transformational results in terms of ecology from the programme, which does not have adequate finance to meet its objectives.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) identified problems in the provision of timely funds, problems in approving the plans of operation and poor utilization of funds. Out of 68 plans of operations reviewed for 16 selected states and Union Territories, only six were submitted to the Ministry of environment and forest within the time when the financial year started, out of which none were approved before the start of the financial year.
Timing of operations is crucial for ecological restoration as planting at an inappropriate time may cause death.
When the Wrong Landscapes Become the Right Statistics
Even more concerning is where the mission has decided to make its interventions.
The CAG identified instances where low or moderately vulnerable ecosystems had been addressed, but more vulnerable ones had been ignored. That goes against the very nature of the landscape approach that the mission itself espouses, one that should be guided by vulnerability to climate change, biodiversity, critical habitat and corridors, and ecosystem worth.
Here, the title of this op-ed comes into its own.
If the goal is ecological resilience, then the question cannot simply be “how many trees have been planted?” The question needs to be “where, and for which ecosystem, and how much difference did that make?”
A thousand seedlings planted in a region ecologically of no significance at all will certainly yield a better picture than the restoration of a difficult degraded watershed.
But the latter will yield far more environmental gain than the former.
Technology Was Available. Accountability Was Missing.
The irony is that India has most of the tools at hand to monitor the restoration process appropriately.
According to the CAG report, the Ministry has a GIS cell, which was not utilized effectively with regard to its technological potential for measuring achievements and making mid-term adjustments. The auditors used GPS, Google Earth Pro, remote sensing and the analytical capabilities provided by IISC to check statements of the mission.
Among the inaccuracies revealed in the audit were incorrect KML files, double plantation areas, and cases where plantations performed within one project intersected with those of another project. As an example, in Madhya Pradesh the CAG discovered a 75 hectares overstatement of achievements in one compartment due to previous plantations already being performed there.
This does not mean that all reported plantations were fake. However, what this shows is that the system unable to differentiate between old activity and new restoration cannot claim credibility in assessing progress.
The Green India Mission Needs a Different Definition of Success
India does not require yet another plantations target which makes good viewing on the government’s dashboard but is unhelpful for ecological regeneration.
The CAG’s suggestions seem like a step towards something more realistic: reviewing targets, solving the problem of convergence, addressing the issue of finance, finding appropriate landscapes, and implementing properly.
In the next step, India must do better.
A baseline must be set for each large-scale ecological restoration scheme. The progress must be monitored independently by satellites and on-site checks. Survival rate must be considered more than mere sapling planting. Biodiversity, soil moisture, canopy structure and overall functioning of ecosystems must become tangible criteria. Communities must have their say in monitoring too, since there cannot be any sustainable ecological regeneration where the people dependent on it are outside the process.
India must also avoid the temptation of seeing all kinds of greening as equal. A plantation in agricultural lands, a tree corridor in urban area, wetland restoration, and natural forest regeneration are different things and they shouldn’t be lumped into one hectare indicator.
The Forest Is the Outcome, Not the Plantation
India’s climate pledges ensure that it is far more than a single government scheme.
The Green India Mission was aimed at supporting India’s pledge of creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2030.
This target cannot be met through mere plantation accounting.
According to the latest assessment of forests in India, forest and tree cover as a percentage of geographical area amounts to 25.2 per cent of the geographical area, according to PRS analysis of the India State of Forest Report 2023. Even this aggregate figure should not serve as an alibi for not inquiring into gains, type of vegetation, and ecological quality.
The audit by CAG thus offers an insight beyond mere environmental statistics.
For India to have its forests, it should move beyond the satisfaction of merely planting trees.
The true test lies in survival beyond the photograph at the inauguration of the sapling. Does it grow? Does it regenerate? Is the landscape recovered? Does biodiversity return? Has the community benefited? Is the ecosystem made resilient?
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