Green India Mission Fell Short By 98% In Increasing Forest Cover: CAG

The forest cover increased by only 0.03 million hectares (ha) against a target of 1.4 million hectares between 2015-16 and 2024-25 under the Green India Mission, according to a new report by the CAG, which pointed to a shortfall of 97.57 per centfrom the target.

Launched in 2014, the mission aims to increase forest/tree cover, improve the quality of forest/non-forest lands, and improve ecosystem services, among other things.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, also revealed that against the target of 1.4 million hectares, improvement of forest cover quality was observed in only 0.11 million hectares (91.87 per cent shortfall) during the same period.

The findings emerged after examining the Green India Mission (GIM) interventions in 16 states and Union territories for which the Environment Ministry had approved physical and financial targets over the last 10 years.

"The absence of convergence, central to the implementation strategy of the GIM, was evident across all institutional levels," said the report.

It added that the mission lacked effective alignment with existing schemes like CAMPA, MGNREGS and other central and state afforestation initiatives.

The report also highlighted that financial management remained a significant hurdle in the mission's implementation.

It said that there was also a lack of monitoring of the interventions made, with 14 states failing to provide required public web-links for transparency.

"Audit evaluations revealed inflated data, overstated achievements due to non-validated KML files and GIS analysis showing that 70 per cent of sampled sites had no noticeable changes attributable to GIM," said the report.

Moreover, except Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, no state conducted any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015-2025, the report added.

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