India’s long and winding path to green climate solutions

"The need to respond to climate change is challenging every large nation to develop new and adequate administrative structures...In India’s case, the needs are clear: redoubled efforts in forest restoration and management—in addition to energy efficiencies, renewable energy systems, and climate-smart agriculture—that counterbalance rapidly increasing emissions from fossil fuel-based power generation" writes Dr Kamaljit S. Bawa, ATREE's Founder-President and Distinguished Professor of Biology, University of Massachusetts Boston in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

He stresses 5 action points for India to ensure that development and environment goals remain complementary:

1- Leverage technology to monitor forest cover and trends in green assets
2- Revolutionize policies for afforestation and land reclamation
3- Involve communities in implementing CAMPA, rather than privileging the private sector in establishing plantations.
4- Align goals and converge implementation of climate-relevant policies
5- Model carbon uptake by Indian forests and soils by using data from the field.

The full paper is available at http://www.pnas.org/content/113/44/12337.full