The new year has not started well for our Himalayan forests, which are engulfed by unseasonal fires that have spread across Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Kashmir. There has been little snow or rain this winter, and these dry conditions have left our forests highly combustible. This has provided the timber mafia a golden opportunity to acquire these shrivelled logs to be auctioned for a good price. And once the forests are cleared, the land mafia can step in to make a killing.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, we are losing 130,000 square km of forest across the globe on a daily basis. If this loss of vegetation continues unabated, we will have lost forests covering the size of India in the next two decades.

This should be a matter of tremendous concern because over a billion people worldwide are dependent on forests for their livelihood. In India, 275 million, largely tribals (one-fifth of our population), are dependent on these shrinking forests for food and livelihood.

During the last three decades, the focus of successive governments has been on development. Government statistics show that 14,000 square kilometres of forests have been cleared to accommodate 23,716 industrial projects in this period.

Key forests presently under threat include global biodiversity hotspots, such as the Western Ghats, the central Indian forests of Hasdeo Arand and Mahan, the forests of the Himalayas, and the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans, to cite a few examples. The problem is that coal blocks and minerals are located below these forests. With large-scale mining........

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