New Delhi: Land degradation in the country has increased to 97.84 million hectares in 2018-19 from 96.32 million hectares in 2011-13, Minister of State for Environment Ashwini Kumar Choubey told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. The government made the revelation stating data from the 'Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India' published by the Space Applications Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Ahmedabad.
According to the figures shared by the minister, in the year 2018-19, out of the 97.84 million hectares of desertified land, approximately 45 million hectares of land was found degraded in just three states. The state with the maximum land desertification was Rajasthan with 21.23 million hectares of desertified land, followed by Maharashtra and Gujarat with 14.3 million hectares and 1.02 million hectares of degraded land respectively.
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 kilometres during the last seven years.
"The India State of Forest Report (ISFR)-2021 states that the total forest cover of the country has increased by 12,294 square kilometres during the last seven years," he said in a written response.
Listing out the measures taken to restore the desertified land, Choubey said the National Afforestation and Eco-development Board (NAEB) is implementing the National Afforestation Programme (NAP) for ecological restoration of degraded forests and adjoining areas through people's participation. He added that an amount of Rs 203.95 crore has been released to the states to treat an area of 37,110 hectares during the last three years and the current year under the programme.
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Choubey further said that 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.
"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.
