Tree Planting Drives Will Not Save India’s Environment  

Every year on June 5th, the familiar scenes unfold across India. Saplings are planted by schoolchildren under fluttering banners, bureaucrats pose beside freshly dug pits with ceremonial shovels, and hashtags bloom across social media declaring India’s commitment to “save the planet.” World Environment Day, marked by tree plantation drives, has become a highly visible ritual—one that offers the illusion of environmental concern without confronting the root of the crisis. But in a country battling lethal air pollution, disappearing forests, vanishing rivers, and extreme heat waves, symbolic gestures are not just inadequate—they are dangerous.

India’s environmental crisis is systemic, structural, and deeply political. According to the 2022 Environmental Performance Index by Yale University, India ranked at the bottom, with abysmal scores in air quality, ecosystem vitality, and climate policy implementation. The 2023 State of Global Air report listed India as home to 39 of the world’s 50 most polluted cities. Meanwhile, in states like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, reckless infrastructure projects have triggered landslides and floods, costing lives and destroying biodiversity. Despite all this, policy focus remains shallow—more interested in optics than outcomes.

Tree plantation drives, while well-intentioned, are often reduced to photo-ops rather than long-term ecological investments. A 2022 report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India revealed that more than 40% of trees planted under compensatory afforestation schemes failed to survive beyond the first year. Saplings were planted in unsuitable areas, poorly maintained, and often not monitored after the initial ceremony. Meanwhile, forest clearances for mining, highways, and commercial projects have continued unabated, often without adequate public consultation or scientific review. In other words, while the state plants a hundred trees with one hand, it permits the felling of a thousand with the other.

True environmental responsibility cannot be ceremonial—it must be structural. India’s forests, rivers, and air need protection through law, policy, and public accountability, not seasonal performances. Environmental governance must begin with transparency in environmental clearances, community participation in ecological decisions, and stringent implementation of the Forest Rights Act, which continues to be undermined in tribal regions. Forest-dwelling communities are frequently evicted in the name of conservation, while corporations are handed those same lands in the name of development. The contradiction is glaring.

Equally urgent is the need to rethink urban planning. Indian cities are expanding at a reckless pace, devouring wetlands, lakes, and green belts in the name of real estate and infrastructure. Heat islands are intensifying, water bodies are drying up, and trees are being chopped to widen roads for more private vehicles—all of which make tree-planting efforts feel like an afterthought. Without regulating emissions, enforcing environmental impact assessments, and integrating ecological resilience into urban design, the saplings planted today are unlikely to survive the air they are meant to purify.

Education and community engagement also remain grossly underutilized. Environmental awareness is still treated as a peripheral subject in schools, and civil society actors working on ecological justice often face apathy or suppression. In 2020, the Indian government proposed amendments to the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification that would have diluted the public consultation process—a move that was widely criticized by environmentalists and citizens alike. The backlash proved that people care, but the policy space remains unwelcoming to grassroots voices.

Climate justice must also become central to India’s green strategy. The poorest communities—Dalits, Adivasis, migrant workers—are the most vulnerable to floods, droughts, and pollution. Yet they are rarely at the center of India’s climate conversation. Tree plantation drives do little for those who have lost livelihoods to deforestation, or whose children walk miles for clean drinking water. Real environmental action must include land rights, decentralised water management, and clean energy access for marginalized communities.

India’s leadership on the global climate stage—through initiatives like the International Solar Alliance or its panchamrit pledges at COP summits—has been noteworthy. But without domestic consistency, these commitments ring hollow. The same government that speaks of net-zero by 2070 also dilutes green norms to fast-track extractive industries. If green ambition is not matched by green integrity, the gap between promise and practice will only grow.

It is not wrong to plant trees. But it is wrong to pretend that doing so once a year is enough. A sapling is not a substitute for policy. A photo opportunity is not a climate solution. India does not need more gestures—it needs governance. The climate crisis is already here, and rituals will not save us. Only honest, democratic, and sustained ecological justice will.

In a time when environmental collapse is no longer a warning but a lived reality, India must move beyond symbolism. It is time to turn planting into planning, tokenism into transformation, and silence into sustained public action. Anything less is not celebration of Environment Day—it is abdication.

Ashish Singh has finished his Ph.D. coursework in political science from the NRU-HSE, Moscow, Russia. He has previously studied at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway; and TISS, Mumbai.