Understanding the Relationship Between Forests and Floods: Empirical Evidence from India

Abstract

"Of all environmental resources, forest resources are the most crucial links in the ecosystems. Apart from providing direct use values, forests provide numerous environmental services such as watershed protection, nutrient cycling, pollution control, climatic regulation, carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, prevent storms and landslides, and controls soil erosion. It is argued that degradation of these precious resources affects the economy and environment both locally and globally. Further, it is observed that the natural forests do reduce the frequency and severity of floods as it trap water during heavy rainfall and release it slowly into streams, which lessens the severity of floods. However, the link between forests and floods is still ambiguous and yet to be settled in academic literature. For unravelling this relationship, the objective of this study is to examine the relationship between flood impact and forest cover in India, where the frequency and severity of flood have risen over the years. The study uses secondary data on flood impact (loss of human lives and people affected), forest cover and deforestation across the states of India for the period 1998-2011. The association between flood impact and forest cover is examined taking into account the meteorological factors and socio-economic parameters of the states. The coefficients of Poisson regression and the Ordinary least square regression obtained suggest that the trend of forest cover in the country have an inverse relationship with the flood impact. Socio-economic factors such as literacy, per capita net state domestic product and total population have a significant influence on the magnitude of flood impact. Whereas climatic factors such as rainfall and temperature did not show a significant influence on the flood impact. The relative hazard loss ratio indicates that all the states of India are economically stable enough to be able to cope with the flood damages. The disaggregate level analysis suggest that several Indian states are highly vulnerable to floods due to large scale deforestation and forest degradation. Hence, large scale investment in forest protection and regeneration is needed to prevent persistent flood occurrences and to protect human lives."