India, the world's fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, plans to spend 100 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) on rejuvenating three million hectares of degraded forests to increase the green cover and soak up emissions.
The government proposes to revive more than 6 million hectares of degraded forests in two phases over the next 10 years, the ministry of environment and forests said in an e-mailed statement today. The first phase envisages planting trees over 3 million hectares starting this year, it said.
The plan is one of the steps that India, whose coastal cities may face inundation from higher ocean levels brought on by climate change, will take to mitigate the impact. The nation will unveil a broader action plan next month as it joins China and almost 130 other developing countries in resisting calls to limit air pollution as their economies expand.
The world's nations are locked in talks for a new treaty to curb output of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 2010, before the Kyoto climate accord on limiting emissions expires. China said in March that developed nations such as the U.S. should cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020.
Forests covered 67.7 million hectares, or 20.6 percent, of India's geographical area in 2006, the government has said. That's 0.1 percent less than in 2003.
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year proposed a plan to rejuvenate degraded forestland in the South Asian nation and save electricity on lamps by providing compact fluorescent lamps at the price of normal bulbs to households.
The world's second-most populous nation needs $5 billion a year between 2012 and 2017, in addition to its current investment plans, to support a transition to low-carbon energy generation, the United Nations Development Program said in a 2007/2008 report.
Part of the money for renewing the forests will come from a fund that collects money from people who are using forest land for various purposes and from the sale of carbon credits, the ministry said.Bloomberg.com
