In a part of Gujarat where summers can stretch water supplies thin, forests are doing a job usually reserved for dams and reservoirs.

Over the past five years, the Surat Forest Division has conserved nearly 580 crore litres of water, building a storage capacity of about 5.83 million cubic metres.

The impact is enough to support the annual water needs of roughly 40,000 villages.

This is the result of a systematic approach that treats forests as living infrastructure, capable of storing, slowing, and releasing water across seasons.

When rainwater is lost before it helps

The problem begins with rain itself.

In many forested landscapes, especially degraded ones, rainwater does not stay. It rushes downhill, taking fertile soil with it. What remains is land that struggles to hold moisture, recharge groundwater, or support vegetation.

Assistant Conservator of Forests Gaurav Lodha describes it this way: when rain falls on exposed or degraded patches, it becomes runoff instead of a resource.

The result is a double loss—water disappears quickly, and soil erosion makes the land less capable of retaining future rainfall. For nearby communities, this translates into drying wells, erratic agriculture, and seasonal distress.

A simple idea, applied precisely

The response in........

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