Revamped Green India Mission: A matter of vulnerable ecosystems and livelihoods

The government's decision to revise the Green India Mission (GIM) and focus on restoring vulnerable landscapes, such as those in the Aravalli range, the Western Ghats and the Himalaya, is welcome. Framed in 2014 during the last days of the UPA government, the mission is not only crucial to meeting India's climate commitments, it is also important for biodiversity conservation and food and water security. The initiative has resulted in an appreciable increase in the country's tree cover. However, it has been criticised for taking a plantation-centred approach and not doing justice to the mission's broader goal of ecological revival. The GIM's revised document attempts to course correct. Especially salient is its emphasis on zeroing in on micro-climatic zones through 'regionally conducive best practices'. This initiative should be combined with addressing another concern of the original GIM, which has largely remained on paper — creating income-generating opportunities for people who rely on these ecosystems.
The Western Ghats, the Aravalli range and the Himalayan region face various challenges including deforestation, human-wildlife conflicts and changing rainfall patterns. Infrastructure development and unregulated tourism have added to their vulnerabilities. Last year, the catastrophic landslide in Wayanad underlined that the depletion of green cover and erratic rainfall had made the area susceptible to disasters. The new GIM document also notes that the Western Ghats ecosystem has degraded due to the felling of trees and illegal mining. Similarly, several studies have shown that the destruction of large chunks of the Aravalli ecosystem — especially its hills — has brought the Thar Desert close to the National Capital Region and this desertification has aggravated the area's pollution problem.
The restoration of most ecological hotspots in the country has been trapped in the environment-development binary. In 2011, a panel chaired by ecologist Madhav Gadgil underlined the need to regulate developmental activities in the entire 1,60,000 sq km stretch of the Western Ghats. Its recommendations were met with resistance across the political spectrum. The suggestions of the K Kasturirangan panel have also remained on paper. Similarly, illegal quarrying has persisted in the Aravalli range despite several SC orders, including as late as May 29. The problem is also that green initiatives have rarely taken people along. The challenge for the revamped GIM will, therefore, be to find ways to sustain and improve people's livelihoods while enhancing ecological security.

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They are not stranded between countries; they are disowned by the very lands that once claimed them, named, then unmade. That alone should remind us that displacement begins not with movement, but with abandonment. If the world is serious about reducing forced migration, it must do more than feed the symptom. It must confront the sovereign impulse to erase. What's needed is a politics that names the displaced not as burden, but as evidence, of what states deny, and what justice demands. Statelessness is not sovereignty's accident. It is its design, and its deepest cruelty. Until that is reversed, borders will remain: not as protections, but as the quiet scars of decisions made, and never confessed. Somewhere, another border will be drawn. And somewhere else, someone will vanish into it. Shyam Tekwani is a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of DKI APCSS, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) of the linked websites, or the information, products, or services contained therein. DoD does not exercise any editorial, security, or other control over the information you may find at these sites. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.