India’s Forests Are Disappearing, Just Not On Paper It Seems

On the afternoon of March 30, bulldozers rolled into Kancha Gachibowli, a lush, 400-acre tract of forested land in Hyderabad, a city in India’s southern Telangana state. Trees were felled throughout the night. Videos taken at the site showed the razing taking place, with sounds of distressed animals echoing in the background.

The land was set to be auctioned off by the Telangana government to make way for an IT park. The urban forest, home to over 730 species of plants, 220 species of birds, and several mammals and reptiles, is also close to the campus of the University of Hyderabad, whose students have been at the forefront of resistance since the felling began. On April 3, the Supreme Court ordered a halt to the “alarming deforestation”.

Like many dense and biodiversity-rich natural forests in India, Kancha Gachibowli does not enjoy legal protection. This is because it is not legally classified as a forest, meaning it does not show up in government records.

This reflects a worrying trend. Across India, forest land is quietly disappearing, often without official acknowledgement of the fact. All this is happening whilst India’s official forest survey, the annual India State of Forests Report (ISFR), claims the country’s forest and tree cover has been increasing.

How are forests defined in India?

In India, the administrative definition of forests differs from the ecological and social, notes Kanchi Kohli, an independent researcher on forest governance.

The ISFR considers as “forest cover” all land over one hectare with a canopy density above 10%, regardless of legal status or ecological value. This means it counts plantations, orchards, bamboo, and palm as forests.

In 2023, it reported an increase of 1,446 sq km in total forest and tree cover that year compared to 2021. Figures from NGOs paint a different picture, however. According to data from Global Forest Watch, from 2021 to 2023, India lost 4,380 sq km of total tree cover with canopy density above 10%, which includes forest. During this period, 94% of tree loss happened in natural forests.

A similar discrepancy was seen for data from 2019-2021, where the ISFR claimed a 2,261 sq km rise in combined forest and tree cover. Meanwhile, Global Forest Watch recorded a 4,270 sq km loss in total tree cover canopy density above 10% for the same period. A Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change press release attributed these “contradictions” to differing definitions of forest and tree cover between the reports.

As of March 2024, over 13,000 sq km of land is under encroachment in the country, according to data from the Union Environment Ministry.

“Any land with tree cover on it is considered forest [by the ISFR] to show there is an optimum state of forest in the country, which responds to both national policies and international negotiations,” says Kohli. Since 1952, India has had a policy of maintaining 33% of its geographical area as forest cover.

Such surveys fail to address the quality of the forest or take into account the social and cultural practices around it, Kohli notes, such as the importance of the forests to the way of life of the Van Gujjars, a pastoralist community. Their traditional practices, such as lopping – or pruning of trees for agricultural and conservation purposes – play a crucial role in forest regeneration. But the Van Gujjars’ contributions and practices are not recognised under the law, nor in official forest surveys.

Although deforestation is acknowledged in the surveys, “it’s often balanced [out] by ambiguous inclusions like trees [planted] outside forest areas, or plantations, and land diverted for other uses legally remains forests”, she says.

“There is no hiding that deforestation is taking place, and some of it is legally admissible,” Kohli adds. “The question [is,] what are you including as forest in lieu of that? It’s land-for-land compensation.”

Deforestation is not the only reason India’s forests are disappearing. The challenge also lies in whether the forests exist on paper. And while monoculture plantations and degraded lands are often recorded as forest gain, dense forests like Kancha Gachibowli are absent from government records. The Supreme Court raised this issue in a hearing in March, noting that many forests have been left out of official records and instructing states to set up expert committees to identify “forest-like areas”, unclassified forest lands or community forest lands within six months.

Kohli says India’s forested land is not classified as such largely because of political interests or differences in how states record land.

The Telangana government, which was granted full ownership of Kancha Gachibowli by the Supreme Court in 2024, said the forest had never been classified as such in its records. A 1996 Supreme Court ruling, known as the Godavarman judgment, defined forested land by its characteristics rather than its official designation. Under this ruling, Kancha Gachibowli is considered a “deemed forest” – a tract of land with ecological characteristics of a forest that is not officially classified as such by the government. But the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Act of 2023 removed protections for deemed forests, instead restricting conservation to “legally notified forests”. This has left them vulnerable to clearance.

Kohli acknowledges that there are communities that stand to benefit from this amendment. This includes those that have been disincentivised to plant trees or engage in agroforestry because of the prior permissions required for legally notified forests. However, broadly, “what this amendment has ended up doing is trying to unlock those lands which can be put to [use for] other purposes”, she says. “People are concerned because the Forest Conservation Act 1980 [the original law] was one of the few tools communities had to regulate how forested land is used.” The amendment is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court by a group of petitioners that includes several former senior officers from the Indian Forest Service.

A nationwide pattern of diminishing forests

Similar situations have unfolded elsewhere in India. In September 2024, the Supreme Court halted the felling of nearly 25,000 trees in the Shahabad Mohammadpur deemed forest in Delhi’s Dwarka neighbourhood for the expansion of a railway facility. Prior to the ruling, the construction activity had sparked protests and legal appeals.

In Haryana state’s Mangar Bani, a known biodiversity hotspot, only 1,132 of its 4,262 acres are officially protected under the Punjab Land Preservation Act of 1900. Despite past Supreme Court rulings in 2002 and 2004 affirming its forest status, much of the land remains unprotected in official records. Environmental activists allege that the region also faced illegal tree felling in 2022. In December 2023, the Supreme Court directed the Haryana government to prevent any further damage to the area, the region’s sole primary forest.

It was one of many rulings by the Supreme Court in recent years regarding conservation. In 2024, it directed the government to comply with the “dictionary” definition of forests as upheld in the judgment. In February 2025, while hearing petitions challenging amendments to the Forest Conservation Act, it ordered the central and state governments to avoid any actions that would lead to the “reduction” of forest land.

Even notified forests are not guaranteed protection

But forests being officially classified as such does not in itself guarantee their safety. Kohli says that even classified forests can still be acquired or diverted for non-forest use. Under Section 2 the Forest Conservation Act, forest land can be used for other purposes, such as infrastructure projects or mining, if prior approval is secured from central government.

An example of this is the mining currently taking place in central India’s largest unfragmented forest, the Hasdeo Arand. In 2009, the environment ministry categorised Hasdeo Arand as a “no-go zone” for mining because of its rich forest cover. But just two years later, the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB) coal mine received initial forest clearance permission, and in March 2012, it was granted stage two clearance permission, allowing the use of 1,898 hectares of forest land for the mine. So far, 94,460 trees have been felled, Bhupender Yadav, minister of environment, forest and climate change, told Parliament in December.

A 2021 Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) report, cited in an affidavit submitted in response to concerns raised by a member of the Nature Conservation Society, identified a number of rare, endangered and threatened species of flora and fauna whose habitat was in the PEKB coal mine. The Wildlife Institute of India, which was consulted by the ICFRE for its report, recommended that no mining be permitted in the region, except in the part of the PEKB mine in Hasdeo Arand where it is already ongoing, due to the area’s “irreplaceable, rich biodiversity and socio-cultural values”. But in March 2022, the Chhattisgarh state government approved the second phase of mining for the PEKB coal mine, granting final forest clearance despite resistance from the region’s Indigenous communities.

On April 16, the Supreme Court asked the Telangana government to come up with a plan to restore the 100 acres of trees in Kancha Gachibowli that had been felled, and take immediate steps to protect the affected wildlife. On May 15, the Supreme Court will hear what is being done to protect the animals that lost their habitat following the tree felling.

From Hasdeo Arand to Dwarka and Mangar Bani, each ecologically rich region faces a different challenge: absence of classification, diversion for development despite legal protection and ignorance towards community voices. This reveals a disconnect between the ecological and social value of the forested land and legal recognition.

“It’s not just the law on paper, but the rationality and process, and whether these laws stay true to their original intent, that really matters,” says Kohli.

(Published under Creative Commons from Dialogue Earth. Read the original article here)