Why in News?

• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently released its Synthesis Report, where it has raised concerns about the ongoing policy of Afforestation in India that allows forests to be cut down and replaced elsewhere.

Highlights

• The fund grew from Rs 1,200 crore to Rs 23,600 crore, but the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found in 2013 that most of the money had been unspent.
• CAMPA has also come under fire for facilitating the destruction of natural ecosystems in exchange for forests to be set up in other places.
• In October 2022, the Haryana government said it would develop the “world’s largest curated safari” using CAMPA funds received from deforestation in Great Nicobar for development projects, 2,400 km away and of very different topography.
• CAMPA-funded projects endangered landscape connectivity and biodiversity corridors” and exposed forest patches to “edge effects.
• Planting non-native species or artificial plantations wouldn’t compensate for the ecosystem loss as well as be hazardous to the existing ecosystem.
• Since the natural ecosystems provide biodiversity, local livelihoods, hydrological services and sequester carbon.
• The IPCC recommended that Renewable energy projects like wind and solar plants must be promoted to mitigate the adverse impacts of natural ecosystem diversion.
• Reducing conversion of natural ecosystems could be more expensive than wind power, yet still less expensive than “ecosystem restoration, afforestation, restoration”, for every GtCO2e.