In order to reverse the damage caused by deforestation, the international task force has estimated that India, in a period of five years, will be required to incur a total expenditure of about Rs.

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 A nine member international task force on conservation of forests has identified India as one of 56 countries of the world which are critically affected by widespread deforestation and steady destruction of natural watersheds: it has also warned that unless urgent conservation measure are taken the country will face a serious food crisis in the next century. the report correctly describes the Himalayan ecosystem as the most critical watershed in the world , the degradation of which now threatens the very processes of life in the indo – gangetic plain , the report documents some aspects of the process of environment destruction that is at work in this country and calls for an expenditure of about Rs 1,450 crores over the next five year period to reverse some of the damage that has taken place while the task force ‘s report is a welcome reminder of the urgency of the task of halting and rolling back the most awesome form of destruction that this country has ever witnessed , it regrettably underestimates the magnitude of the effort involved and hence falls short of suggesting a comprehensive solution to the problem . For instance the five – year programme it recommends bears no relationship to the resources that will be actually needed even to reach a zero net rate of deforestation, which is proceeding at the furious pace of 1.3 million hectares a year
Past experience shows that more than Rs 300 crores in government expenditure alone are needed over four to five years at today‘s prices merely to plant less than a million hectares of land with fuel wood trees . Realistically speaking, resources of the order of Rs.1,000 crores a year will be necessary for the next five years to sustain a plan that actually provides a forest cover to badly denuded land promotes the planning of fuel wood trees on a sizeable scale and involves proper conservation measures and an underestimation of the magnitude of such a plan is not the only flaw in the report . An even more serious one related to the first, lies in its failure to establish a coherent set of priorities among the different functions that an afforestation programme must perform. to take just one example , the vital task of planning fuelwood and fodder trees is put on part with the planning of trees to meet the aw materials requirements of industries. Owing to this confusion the task force falls short of recommending the kind of radical measures that are really needed including a moratorium in on the development of and in some areas phasing out of wood based industries: steps against the spreading of monocultures and entrusting afforestation programmes to the people in the affected regions rather than the government machinery.