Key Points
Government figures in 2022 showed that in the six years since 2015, the carbon sink in the country which is the total amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by and residing in forests and trees had increased by 703 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or roughly by 120 million tonnes every year..
India had committed to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030, but it had made no mention of the baseline year..
Indias forests and tree cover had a carbon sink of 29.38 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2015, and this was projected to increase in a business-as-usual scenario that is, without the intervention of any fresh effort to 31.87 billion tonnes in 2030, according to the FSI analysis...
The first interpretation of additional (over and above the baseline year) would mean Indias target would be met if the carbon sink in 2030 was in the range of 31.88 to 32.38 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent..
In a written reply to a Parliament question on July 25, 2022, Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said, India had already achieved 1.97 billion tonnes of additional carbon sink as compared to the base year of 2005...
