A grassland offered as compensatory afforestation land
A 500 ha degraded forest block in Sarguja is proposed as compensatory afforestation land for a coal block in the same district. Ground truthing shows open savanna woodland with about 30 per cent Lantana camara cover, 20 per cent bare eroded soil, shallow soil over murum, patches of good grass, a resident group of chital, three grassland-specialist bird species, and two seasonal streams. About 900 cattle from two villages graze the block, and the gram sabha has filed a community forest resource claim under the Forest Rights Act, which is still pending. The compensatory afforestation plan proposes teak at 1,100 stems per hectare with three weedings, funded at Rs 1.2 crore of CAMPA money. The coal company needs the land within the district, and the divisional office is under pressure to accept the site quickly.
1. Should the block be accepted as compensatory afforestation land, and should teak be planted on it? Give your recommendation with reasons.
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On acceptance. Compensatory afforestation must be genuinely additional and ecologically equivalent to what is lost, not merely available. This block is already notified forest, already under a pending community forest resource claim, and already used by two villages. Accepting it converts a community resource into a plantation funded by a third party, without the gram sabha's consent, and the pending claim must be settled before any treatment is planned. It is also doubtful additionality: restoring a degraded forest that the department already owns does not compensate for loss of a different forest unless the improvement is real and verifiable.
On teak. A savanna with chital, grassland birds and seasonal streams is a distinct habitat. Converting it to a teak monoculture at 1,100 stems per hectare would remove the grass layer, reduce early carbon storage in soil, and eliminate the very biodiversity the site currently holds; teak also grows poorly on 20 per cent bare, shallow murum. The correct prescription is to keep grassland as grassland: assisted natural regeneration, protection from uncontrolled grazing, and enrichment planting only in the deeper-soil patches and along the streams, with native miscellaneous species and bamboo rather than teak.
Recommendation. Do not accept the block as compensatory afforestation land in its present form. Ask for an alternative site or for a landscape plan that keeps the grassland, secures gram sabha consent on the record, and treats the Lantana and erosion as the real problems. If pressure to accept is unavoidable, accept only with a written zoning plan and a condition against ploughing and teak planting on the grassland core.
2. Give a five-year restoration plan for the block, covering Lantana, grazing, fire and the streams, with the logic behind each operation.
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Year 1 - stop the damage and map it. Physical survey and demarcation of the grassland core, the woodland patches and the stream buffers. Cut Lantana in the core by root-pulling and cut-stump treatment in the pre-monsoon window, leaving untreated patches as a refuge, and do not burn the cleared area. Agree a rotational grazing calendar with the two villages, with a closed core and a grazing zone, and write it down through the gram sabha. Clear fire lines around the woodland and stream buffers.
Year 2 - establish and stabilise. Assisted natural regeneration in the woodland patches by liberating established seedlings; sow native grass seed and plant grass slips on the eroded 20 per cent; brushwood check dams and staggered trenches in the gullies feeding the seasonal streams; second Lantana follow-up, because a single cut guarantees regrowth.
Year 3 - enrichment only where soil allows. Plant native miscellaneous species and bamboo on the deeper patches and along the streams at low density, with individual guards against cattle; no ploughing on the core.
Years 4 and 5 - consolidate. Repeat Lantana treatment where regeneration is seen, monitor grass cover and stream flow, and hand over protection to the village committee with a written management arrangement, since the community is the only institution that will be present after the project money ends.
Logic. Every operation addresses the diagnosed problem: Lantana is controlled, not merely cut; grazing is regulated, not banned; water is slowed before it is stored; and planting is confined to where the soil can carry trees.
3. What would you report on carbon and biodiversity, and what are the pitfalls of claiming carbon benefits from this kind of site?
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Report separately. For biodiversity: grass cover and species composition on fixed quadrats, number of grassland bird species and their abundance, chital sightings and dung counts, stream flow duration, and Lantana cover as a negative indicator. For carbon: live biomass from a small number of measured plots, soil organic carbon to a stated depth from fixed points, and a clear note on what was measured and what was modelled. Report both against a pre-project baseline, and state the assumptions openly rather than presenting a single favourable number.
Pitfalls. (a) Grassland and savanna systems hold much of their carbon below ground; a teak plantation claim based on above-ground biomass can ignore the soil carbon lost when the grass layer is destroyed. (b) Carbon accumulation in a new plantation is slow and uncertain, while the emission from the coal block is immediate, so offsetting on this site cannot be treated as equivalent. (c) Plantation on a shallow, eroded site may fail, and a failed plantation reported as a carbon asset is a misstatement. (d) Grazing and fire, if excluded from the accounting, make the figures unverifiable. (e) Claiming biodiversity co-benefits from a monoculture is not defensible - the grassland species are the ones at risk from the plantation itself. The honest position is that this site's value is primarily ecological and hydrological, and carbon should be reported as a modest co-benefit only if measured.