A new report from the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department and the Bharti Institute of Public Policy values the state's primary forest bio-resources at Rs 22,600 crore per year. The report highlights that forests in Himachal store around 258 million tons of carbon across biomass and soil pools, making the state a key contributor to India's terrestrial carbon sink. This natural capital supports India's NDC commitment to create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3.0 billion tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030. The study involved over 500 forest guards and nearly 200,000 geo-tagged observations, integrating ground data with satellite imagery and AI models for species mapping and biomass estimation. It also notes emerging climate-linked programs like a biochar initiative using pine needles and invasive lantana. However, the report warns that a credible carbon strategy needs species-level inventories and spatially explicit carbon accounting, not just aggregate forest cover statistics.
