ENVIRONMENTAL STATUS OF INDIA

India is a large and diverse country. Its land area includes regions with some of the world’s highest rainfall to very dry deserts, coast line to alpine regions, river deltas to tropical islands. The variety and distribution of forest vegetation is large. India is one of the 17 mega biodiversity regions of the world. The environmental issues in India become more serious every day and it is turning into a bit of a mess on this front but with a serious lack of education and over 1 billion people, a huge amount of which are in dire poverty. There are many environmental issues in India. The major environmental issues are pollution, forest and agricultural degradation of land, resource depletion (water, mineral, forest, sand, rocks, etc.), environmental degradation, public health, loss of biodiversity, loss of resilience in ecosystems and livelihood security for the poor. India’s National Forest Policy expects to invest US$26.7 billion by 2020, to pursue nationwide afforestation coupled with forest conservation, with the goal of increasing India’s forest cover from 20% to 33%.