Ahead of the COP-14 and part of an international initiative called Bonn Challenge, the Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has launched a flagship project to enhance India’s capacity for forest landscape restoration.
The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring
150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land under restoration by 2020.
350 million hectares by 2030.
The flagship project will be implemented during a pilot phase of 3.5 years in the five pilot states - Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Nagaland and Karnataka.
A 2016 report by the Indian Space Research Organisation found that about 29% of India’s land (in 2011-13) was degraded.
Also, for the first time, India will host the 14th session of the Conference of Parties (COP-14) of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in September 2019.