India Cut Down 1.6 Million Hectares. And We’re Calling It Progress.

A column written by Prasad Bidapa.

Let’s not dress this up.

In the last 14 years, from 2012 to 2024, India lost 1.62 million hectares of tree cover. That’s not a typo. In 2016 we lost 164,150 hectares. In 2017 we lost 179,261 hectares. Those were the worst years on record in the last decade.

Since 2001, the total damage is 2.31 million hectares gone. That’s a 7.1% decline. It has put 1.29 gigatonnes of CO₂ into the air.

And before you tell me “but we planted trees,” hear me out. Because the numbers the government quotes are hiding the real story.

The part we can’t get back: Primary forest

348,000 hectares of primary forest have been lost since 2002.

Primary forest means old. Natural. Humid. The kind that took 200 years to build the soil, the canopy, the relationships between trees, fungus, birds, and water. You do not “compensate” for that.

In 2024 alone we lost 18,200 hectares of primary forest. That’s up from 17,700 hectares in 2023. The rate is increasing, not slowing.

The Ministry told Parliament that 1,734 square kilometers of forest was diverted for development in 10 years. Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Gujarat, Arunachal Pradesh led. Karnataka is right in that conversation.

At the same time, the government says overall forest cover went up by 21,762 square kilometers between 2011 and 2021.

That’s true. But most of it is plantations. Teak. Eucalyptus. Rubber. It’s green on a satellite map. It is not a forest. It doesn’t hold water. It doesn’t hold wildlife. It’s accounting, not ecology.

Karnataka and Kodagu: Where the pressure is live

Global Forest Watch calls out the Western Ghats specifically. The drivers here are not mysterious. Roads, tourism, plantations.

That means widening NH-275, more homestays in Madikeri, coffee estates pushing higher up the slope, and “weekend projects” that carve into slopes that should never have been touched.

I was in Kodagu last month. I met Devaiah. Third-generation coffee grower in Virajpet. His estate sits on the edge of reserve forest.

“The rain is not the same,” he said. No drama. Just fact. “It comes late. And when it comes, it runs. It doesn’t stay in the ground.”

That matters. Because Kodagu is not just scenic. It is hydrological. The Western Ghats feed the Kaveri, the Netravati, the Sharavathi. Break the forest here and you break water for Bangalore, for Mysuru, for Tamil Nadu downstream.

The report says “due to deforestation, India is facing water problems in urban cities and villages.” In Bangalore we feel it as dry borewells. In Kodagu they feel it as landslides.

This is not theoretical. From 2001 to 2022, tree cover loss in India released 51 million tons of CO₂ equivalent per year. Our forests still remove more than they emit — a net sink of 89.9 million tons per year — but you cannot keep withdrawing from the principal and expect the interest to hold forever.

And it’s not just water. “Birds like sparrows, pigeons and crows are becoming rarer due to deforestation.” I haven’t heard a Malabar whistling thrush on a friend’s estate in three years. Devaiah says the bees are fewer during coffee bloom.

What about the Northeast? A note on Jhum

When people see “1.39 million hectares lost to shifting cultivation” they picture villains with axes. It’s not that simple.

In Arunachal, Nagaland, Mizoram and the rest of the Northeast, that practice is called Jhum. It’s slash-and-burn farming that communities have done for centuries.

Here’s how it works: cut a patch of hillside, burn it in Feb, plant rice, maize, chilies and 20 other crops together. Farm it 2-3 years. Then leave it and let the forest grow back for 10-15 years while you move to the next patch.

When the cycle was long, it worked. The forest came back.

The problem today is the cycle is broken. Population pressure and less land means the fallow is now 3-4 years, not 15. The forest can’t recover. You get weeds, not trees. And on steep slopes that means erosion and silt in the rivers.

Jhum is not deforestation for profit. It’s food on the table. You can’t ban it and walk away. The fix is settled agroforestry, fruit trees, cardamom, bamboo, and actually paying people to keep the land under forest while it regenerates.

So let’s be clear: Northeast loss is about livelihood pressure. Western Ghats loss is about development choices. Both count. But the solutions are different.

Why this is happening elsewhere

Between 2001 and 2024, the other big causes were:

Permanent agriculture: 620,000 hectares.

Logging: 182,000 hectares.

Infrastructure and settlements: 30,600 hectares.

Mining and plantations: 16,300 hectares.

In Central India it’s mining. In the Western Ghats and in Kodagu it’s us. It’s roads and resorts sold as inevitability.

We are also losing to fire. 36,200 hectares lost to fire between 2001 and 2024.

And globally, the FAO ranked India second in deforestation rate between 2015 and 2020, at 668,000 hectares per year. We need to sit with that.

The lie of “net gain”

Yes, India gained 1.78 million hectares of tree cover between 2000 and 2020. We are one of the top 3 gainers globally.

But you cannot swap 100 hectares of primary evergreen forest in the Ghats for 100 hectares of eucalyptus on revenue land and call it even. One stores carbon for centuries. The other is harvested in 8 years. One holds a watershed. The other sucks it dry.

“Forest cover” is a useful metric. It is not the only metric. Quality matters. Age matters. Biodiversity matters.

What we do now. No slogans.

I’m not interested in vague calls to “save nature.” Here is what would actually move the needle:

1. Draw a red line around primary forest and enforce it.

18,200 hectares lost last year is a policy failure. Map every remaining patch of humid primary forest in the Western Ghats. Make diversion nearly impossible. Pay the cost of saying no.

2. Fix compensatory afforestation.

If you take 1 hectare of forest for a road, you pay. But right now we get monocultures and no follow-up. Mandate native species. Mandate 30-year monitoring. Make the user agency liable.

3. Take the pressure off Kodagu.

Cap tourism density. Incentivize fewer, better homestays instead of 50 new builds on a slope. For roads, use tunnels and elevated corridors instead of cutting hillsides. Devaiah and his neighbors should not be paying for Bangalore’s weekend traffic.

4. Pay people to keep forests standing.

India’s forests are still a net carbon sink. That is an asset. Create payments for ecosystem services. If a coffee grower in Kodagu maintains shade canopy and riparian buffers, pay him for the water and carbon he is storing. Make conservation more profitable than conversion.

5. Deal with Jhum and fire honestly.

Give Northeastern communities tenure and alternatives on the same land. Early warning systems and community fire lines work better than raids.

The bottom line

We lost 1.62 million hectares in 14 years. We lost 348,000 hectares of primary forest since 2002.

You can call that progress if you want. You can call plantations “forest cover” if you want.

But Devaiah in Virajpet will still tell you the rain is different. Bangalore will still have water fights every summer. And the Kaveri will still start in a hillside that has fewer trees than it did when I was a kid.

I’m not a sentimentalist. I’m a pragmatist. Cutting your watershed to build resorts is a bad business decision. Losing primary forest to save 20 minutes on a highway is a bad trade.

We have the data. We have the laws. What we don’t have is the discipline to choose long-term over short-term.

So here’s the choice, plainly:

We either protect what’s left of the old forest, restore the degraded land with real forests, and pay the people who live there to be the guardians.

Or we keep planting saplings, patting ourselves on the back, and wondering in 10 years why the taps are dry.

I know which side I’m on.

For keeps.

All figures: Global Forest Watch 2001-2024, Govt of India Rajya Sabha data

To advertise on The Kodagu Express website, kindly call us at 9108795369 or mail us at thekodaguexpress@gmail.com 

Join The Kodagu Express WhatsApp Group: CLICK HERE 

Follow us on Instagram and X(Twitter)