🔆 Green India Mission (GIM)

📍 About
✅ Launched in 2014 under National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).
✅ Nodal Ministry: Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEFCC).
✅ Aim: Combat climate change by expanding forest & tree cover + restoring degraded ecosystems.
✅ Target:
• Increase forest/tree cover on 5 million ha.
• Improve quality of forest cover on another 5 million ha.
✅ Livelihood Goal: Improve income of forest-dependent communities.

📍 Revised GIM
✅ Adopts micro-ecosystem approach → focus on Aravallis, Western Ghats, Indian Himalayas, Mangroves.
✅ Moves away from plantation-centric approach.
✅ Linked with projects like Aravalli Green Wall.
✅ Strategies: open forest recovery, agroforestry, plantation on degraded lands.

📍 Commitments
✅ Land degradation: ~98 million ha degraded (ISRO, 2018–19).
✅ UNFCCC target: Additional carbon sink of 2.5–3 billion tonnes CO₂ via forests by 2030.
✅ Restore 26 million ha degraded land by 2030.

📍 Projections
✅ FSI estimate: 1.89 billion tonnes CO₂ sequestration over ~15 million ha.
✅ With expanded efforts → Forest/tree cover may rise by 24.7 million ha.
✅ Could create carbon sink of 3.39 billion tonnes CO₂ eq. by 2030.

🔆 Prelims Practice
Q. With reference to the Green India Mission (GIM), consider the following:
1. It is one of the eight missions under NAPCC.
2. It aims to increase forest and tree cover as well as improve the quality of existing forests.
3. The revised plan focuses only on plantations in degraded lands.

Which of the above are correct?
(a) 1 & 2 only
(b) 2 & 3 only
(c) 1 & 3 only
(d) 1, 2 & 3
👉 Answer: (a)

🔆 Mains Practice
Q. Discuss the significance of the revised Green India Mission in achieving India’s commitments under UNFCCC. How does the micro-ecosystem approach address the limitations of the earlier plantation-centric model? (250 words)

#Environment #ClimateAction #UPSC