Goal 15: Life on Land

What Goal 15 asks for

Goal 15 covers land ecosystems and the species that live in them, and it is more specific than the phrase life on land suggests. Its first targets are about conserving, restoring and sustainably using terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems, naming forests, wetlands, mountains and drylands; halting deforestation, restoring degraded forests and increasing afforestation and reforestation; and combating desertification and restoring degraded land and soil, with the aim of a land degradation-neutral world. Degradation, not only outright clearing, is the operative concept: land can remain classified as forest or farmland while losing most of its capacity to hold water, soil and species.

The species-focused targets ask countries to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt biodiversity loss and prevent the extinction of threatened species, and to end poaching and trafficking of protected flora and fauna by addressing both demand and supply. A separate target deals with invasive alien species. Others concern the fair and equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources and the integration of ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and public accounts, which is an attempt to stop nature being treated as free. The implementation targets are about mobilising finance for biodiversity and sustainable forest management and about supporting local communities to pursue livelihoods that do not depend on wildlife crime.

Goal 15 in India

The India State of Forest Report 2023, published by the Forest Survey of India and released in December 2024, put total forest and tree cover at 8,27,357 sq km, or 25.17 per cent of the country's geographical area, made up of 7,15,343 sq km of forest cover (21.76 per cent) and 1,12,014 sq km of tree cover (3.41 per cent), an increase of 1,445 sq km over the 2021 assessment. Mangrove cover stood at 4,992 sq km. Nineteen states and union territories have more than 33 per cent of their area under forest cover, and Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Maharashtra hold the largest forest and tree cover by area. The assessment is biennial and has been produced since 1987, which makes it one of the few long, consistent environmental time series in the country.

Conservation in India is unusual in that a very large number of people live inside and alongside protected and forested landscapes, so rights and conservation are the same conversation. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 recognises the rights of forest-dwelling tribal communities and other traditional forest dwellers to forest resources on which they depend for livelihood, habitation and socio-cultural needs, covering individual rights of self-cultivation and habitation and community rights including grazing, fishing and access to water bodies, habitat rights for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, and seasonal resource access for nomadic and pastoral communities. Non-profits working on Goal 15 in India tend to occupy one of several roles: restoring specific ecosystems such as grasslands, wetlands, mangroves and degraded forest; anti-poaching and wildlife trafficking work and support to frontline forest staff; wildlife rescue and veterinary care; mitigating human-wildlife conflict, which is the main reason rural support for conservation is lost; and helping forest-dwelling communities file and secure claims under the Forest Rights Act and manage community forest resources.