Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday cited a study which "confirms that forest carbon sinks in India are weakening" under current and future climate change scenarios, and stressed that enhancing the quality of forests as well as protecting them is of paramount importance. The Congress general secretary said that in the era of global warming and climate change, forests have been given great importance because they are natural carbon sinks.

But what if global warming itself impacts this absorptive capacity, he questioned.

"Now two scientists at IIT Kharagpur have published a detailed remote sensing-based study that confirms that forest carbon sinks in India are weakening under current and future climate change scenarios. Enhancing the quality of forests and protecting them is of paramount importance," Ramesh said in a post on X.

Greenness does not automatically translate to carbon uptake, he said.

"India's biodiversity-rich natural forests are under severe threat. We continue to cling to the completely mistaken idea that compensatory afforestation can substitute for planned diversion and loss of good quality forest cover," Ramesh said. Well over half of the area recorded as being under forest cover is "actually degraded, poor quality forests", he claimed.

Ramesh also shared a link to the article titled - 'Weakening of forest carbon stocks due to declining Ecosystem Photosynthetic Efficiency under the current and future climate change scenarios in India'.