India losing green cover faster than ever, warns study

Sydney, Sep 15: The world's forests have shrunk by three percent since 1990 - an area equivalent to the size of South Africa - and India is among the countries who are losing their forest cover faster than others, researchers have warned. The green cover is being more rapidly lost in some of the developing and poorest countries including India, Vietnam and Ghana. “In low-income countries with high forest cover, forests are being cleared for direct subsistence by individuals and families and large scale agriculture for broader economic development," said lead researcher and professor Rod Keenan from University of Melbourne. “Some have policies and regulations to protect forests, but they do not have the capacity and resources to implement them,” he added in United Nation's Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA) 2015 report released this week. While the pace of forest loss has slowed, the damage over the past 25 years has been considerable. Total global forest area has declined by three percent between 1990 and 2015 from 4,128 million hectares to 3,999 million hectares - a loss of 129 million hectares.