As India navigates the twin imperatives of economic growth and sustainable development, forests are once again finding their rightful place in the national climate conversation. The recent release of the revised blueprint for the Green India Mission (GIM) puts restoration at the forefront. The ambition is bold: restore 25 million hectares of degraded forest and non-forest land by 2030.

This isn’t just about greening land for its own sake. It directly ties to India’s climate pledge to create an additional carbon sink of up to 3.39 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent by the end of this decade. The big question is not just how much land India restores, but how it restores it.

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A 2025 study by IIT Kharagpur, in collaboration with IIT Bombay and BITS Pilani, reported a 12% decli

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