The Comptroller and Auditor General has flagged that the forest cover increased by only 0.03 million hectares against a target of 1.4 million hectares in the last 10 years under the Green India Mission, reported The Times of India on Thursday. This is a shortfall of 97.5% from the target.

Launched in February 2014, the Green India Mission is an initiative under the National Action Plan on Climate Change to protect, restore, and enhance the forest cover of India.

The audit report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday said that the shortfall in implementing the mission was due to poor financial planning and non-alignment with existing state and central schemes, reported Hindustan Times.

There was also a lack of monitoring of the interventions made under the mission, according to The Times of India.

The report covered interventions made under the mission in 16 states and Union territories for which financial targets between the financial years 2015-’16 and 2024-’25 were approved by the Ministry of Environment.

It pointed out that improvement of forest cover quality was seen in only 0.1 million hectares, as compared to a target of 1.4 million hectares. This marked a shortfall of 91.8%.

Only Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh conducted assessments of carbon sequestration between 2015 and 2025, the Hindustan Times quoted the report as saying. This was due to poor financial management of the mission, it added.

Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide from the air and storing it safely away. This is done to keep carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce warming of the planet. Trees, soil and the ocean do this naturally.

The auditor further said that areas with low or moderate vulnerability to climate were selected for implementing the mission instead of those more susceptible to climate change, violating a key criterion of the programme.

“The lack of convergence led to non-attainment in securing Rs 10,600 crore in proposed funding support,” the Hindustan Times quoted the report as saying.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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