Forest Fires and the Eroding Carbon Balance in the Himalayas

The Forest Survey of India’s biennial India State of Forest Report (ISFR) claims an encouraging rise in tree cover in the Himalayan states. However, other studies caution that this apparent success masks a deeper climatic and ecological crisis, inadvertently triggering a quiet carbon leak from the escalating forest fires. Between November 2023 and June 2024, Himachal Pradesh saw a 1,339 percent increase in forest fires. During the same period, Jammu and Kashmir witnessed a 2,822 percent increase. Rising forest fire incidents have reduced the carbon performance of the hill states, diminishing the gains from increased green cover.

‘Greening’ of the Himalayas

The ISFR interprets satellite images to assess India’s forest cover. The first ISFR (1987) utilised LANDSAT-MSS satellite data with a spatial resolution of 80 m at a scale of 1:1 million. In contrast, the latest report, ISFR 2023, is based on Resourcesat-2 LISS III satellite images with a spatial resolution of 23.5 m and a scale of 1:50,000. ISFR maps green cover for land areas measuring more than 1 hectare with a green canopy of more than 10 percent, irrespective of their ownership, land use, or legal status, using internationally accepted criteria under Decision 19 of the Conference of the Parties (CoP) 9.

However, ISFR’s forest cover estimates do not distinguish between natural forests and monoculture plantations. Both appear as forests because they exceed the 10 percent canopy threshold and produce similar green patches in satellite imagery. For example, in its 2024 affidavit to the National Green Tribunal, the Uttarakhand government affirmed that 16 percent of the state’s tree cover gain since 2000 occurred because of plantations. In contrast, the IPCC’s Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (GPG-LULUCF), the European Union’s Carbon Removal Certification Framework, and Brazil’s forest-carbon accounting all treat natural forest and plantations separately. Such a distinction is crucial for accurate and transparent reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and management.

The distortions in the carbon balance mainly arise because the ISFR treats monoculture plantations, including pine, eucalyptus, and teak, as forest growth. Not only do these tree species store less carbon than other varieties, but they are also highly prone to fire, and when they burn, their stored carbon is rapidly released back into the atmosphere.

The Erosion of Himalayan Carbon Sinks

India’s National Determined Contributions (NDCs) aim to create an additional carbon sink of up to 3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by 2030 through enhanced forest and green cover. However, this ambition needs to be reevaluated in light of the increasing number of forest fires in the Himalayas.

The distortions in the carbon balance mainly arise because the ISFR treats monoculture plantations, including pine, eucalyptus, and teak, as forest growth. Not only do these tree species store less carbon than other varieties, but they are also highly prone to fire, and when they burn, their stored carbon is rapidly released back into the atmosphere. These species also regenerate quickly, creating a vicious circle of burning and regeneration that impacts soil health and the carbon stability of other species. Over time, they thus function as carbon-leak systems, contributing to forests that are less resilient to disturbances.

In northeast India, shifting cultivation has accelerated the incidence of forest fires from the historic 20–30-year cycle to just 2-3 years, indicating the rapid erosion of the ecosystem’s resilience. This trend is also evident in the chir-pine belts of the western Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. These short fire return intervals prevent forests from reaching mature, high-carbon states, degrade soil carbon, and turn forests into recurring carbon emitters rather than long-term carbon banks. In contrast, despite significant variance across regional ecosystems, the average fire return interval in Mediterranean forests is shorter than 20 years, and it is 9-29 years in the mixed conifer systems of the western US.

What is Fueling the Fire?

The surge in forest fires is not accidental; it is the result of multiple ecological, anthropological, and institutional drivers converging. India’s state forest departments have historically incentivised the rapidly growing but highly inflammable chir-pine and other monoculture plantations, leading to the displacement of native and resilient oak-rhododendron forest systems. Pine needles accumulate in thick, dry layers and ignite easily, creating landscapes primed for recurring fire cycles. This practice has also led to the displacement of traditional pastoralism, once a crucial mechanism for clearing forest litter, in Brazil, Chile and Indonesia.

Climate change has exacerbated this trend. The western Himalayas experience longer dry spells and hotter pre-monsoon periods, which have significantly reduced moisture and increased the terrain’s susceptibility to fire.

India’s state forest departments have historically incentivised the rapidly growing but highly inflammable chir-pine and other monoculture plantations, leading to the displacement of native and resilient oak-rhododendron forest systems.

Moreover, accidental or intentional human activities, including but not limited to stubble burning, shifting cultivation, tourism, and setting fires to promote mushroom growth, are primarily responsible for 95 percent of forest fires in the Himalayas. The weakening of community-managed forest systems has further eroded traditional fire-prevention methods and early response practices.

The Way Forward

Managing the Himalayan carbon release requires India to shift from a narrow, number-driven interpretation of ‘green’ to a much deeper understanding of how forests actually store, retain and lose carbon. The current estimation of forest cover may sound promising, but carbon mass requires biomass stability over the decades. India’s vast Himalayan region is already one of the most fragile mountainous regions, rapidly losing its stability due to fire-prone plantations, rising temperatures, population growth, urbanisation, and weakening community forest institutions. A meaningful solution must move beyond plantation targets and integrate carbon permanence, fire resilience, and ecological integrity in India’s forest policies in the Himalayas.

The most urgent intervention must be to replace monoculture plantations with native mixed and broadleaf ecosystems. Teak, eucalyptus, and pine plantations may appear to increase forest cover digitally and on paper, but they store less carbon, dry out more quickly, and burn more intensely. On the other hand, native broadleaf forests, such as those featuring oak, rhododendron, and other mixed Himalayan hardwoods, take time to grow. However, they retain moisture, accumulate deep-soil carbon, support biodiversity, and exhibit lower flammability than monoculture plantations. Studies consistently demonstrate that oak-dominated forests store 2-3.5 times more carbon than pine forests. Transitioning to these native systems can yield long-term carbon reductions in the Himalayan belt.

The ISFR currently measures only the extent of the canopy, without accounting for its stability or vulnerability to fire. Therefore, integrating fire-return interval monitoring into India’s biennial forest assessment will help policymakers distinguish between long-term ecological recovery and carbon sequestration, as well as between fast-growing, fire-prone species.

Like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, which separately report emissions from natural disturbances in their national land-use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) inventories, the IFSR must subtract emissions from plantation-based carbon gains from the net forest-based carbon sequestration to prevent inflating India’s net sink estimates.

Integrating fire-return interval monitoring into India’s biennial forest assessment will help policymakers distinguish between long-term ecological recovery and carbon sequestration, as well as between fast-growing, fire-prone species.

Equally vital is the revival of community-led forest governance. Empowering the Van Panchayats with funds and capacity-building can revive the traditional practices, such as rotational grazing, controlled winter burning, and collective watch systems, which helped minimise the fuel load. India’s joint forest management (JFM) groups and traditional community-led forest resource management under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) show how local stewardship reduces fire risk. Nepal’s community forestry user groups (CFUGs), Mexico’s community forest enterprises, and Australia’s indigenous cultural burning have shown similar success.

India must also invest in district-level satellite-based and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled early warning and rapid-response systems for forest fire prediction and mitigation. Europe’s forest fire information system (EFFIS), NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), and Australia’s AI-based bushfire prediction system use real-time satellite data and AI models to provide real-time forest fire warnings.

Conclusion

This Himalayan crisis is no longer just about planting trees, but also about carbon stability, ecological resilience, and long-term planetary safety. As fires intensify and monocultures expand, the Himalayas are slowly shifting from a carbon sink to a carbon leak. The Himalayan forests are also affected by climate change, mirroring trends in the Andes, the Rocky Mountains, and the Alps, where climate change-induced fires are erasing decades of carbon gains.

Addressing this crisis requires adopting global best practices in early warning, transparent accounting, and ecological monitoring. India must urgently rethink its policies before the hills reach an irreversible environmental tipping point, undermining both regional climate resilience and national climate commitments.

Dhaval Desai is a Senior Fellow and Vice President at the Observer Research Foundation.

Sahil Kapoor is a Research Intern with the Urban Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

• Urbanisation
• India
• carbon balance in Himalayas
• forest fire incidents in india
• forest fires in Himalayas
• india state of forest report
• wildfires in himalayas
• wildfires in india

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