Grassland Restoration in India: Why Grassland Conservation Matters

Overview

Ancient old-growth grasslands are irreplaceable ecological biomes shaped across millennia. Newly restored secondary grasslands cannot replicate their complex belowground root architectures, resilient microbial assemblages, or specialised endemic biodiversity.

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, these primary open ecosystems co-evolved with natural fire regimes and megaherbivore grazing patterns to establish resilient subterranean carbon sinks. Restored sites help stabilise degraded lands, but they consistently display structural species poverty and cannot substitute for pristine grassland conservation.

India's semi-arid open natural biomes require dedicated statutory safeguards. These protections must prevent tree-centric compensatory afforestation and reverse historical revenue misclassifications.

On August 17, 2026, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change launched India's first dedicated open ecosystems guide at the UNCCD COP17 summit in Ulaanbaatar.

The publication, titled 'Guide to Grasslands and Other Open Natural Ecosystems of India', officially categorises 24 distinct open ecosystem types across the country. This policy framework marks an institutional departure from colonial-era classifications that treated non-forested landscapes as degraded terrain.

As of August 2026, official recognition highlights the ecological vulnerability of India's Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs). These biomes face persistent degradation from poorly targeted greening campaigns and infrastructure expansion, requiring a shift toward function-based habitat conservation.

Old-growth grasslands are ancient, primary ecological biomes that have maintained structural continuity over thousands of years. They evolved through continuous interaction with periodic fire regimes and native herbivore grazing.

These ancient biomes feature extraordinary floristic richness, specialised botanical traits, and deep evolutionary heritage. Unlike secondary grasslands that emerge after agricultural clearing, primary grasslands feature flora with extensive Underground Storage Organs (USOs), deep bud banks, and lignotubers.

Botanists classify many of these ancient herbaceous species as geoxylic life-forms, often described as underground forests. Massive subterranean woody root networks allow native plants to resprout rapidly following seasonal fires and prolonged droughts.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that secondary restored grasslands suffer from severe taxonomic depauperation compared to ancient ecosystems.

Restored grasslands take centuries to assemble the intricate soil horizons, mycorrhizal networks, and niche specialisations found in undisturbed native biomes. The table below outlines the core functional differences between both systems:

Subterranean biomass dynamics explain why artificial restoration cannot substitute for ancient grassland carbon permanence or specialised habitat functions.

World Resources Institute assessments establish that grasslands sequester up to 90% of their organic carbon pool belowground within roots, rhizomes, and microbial necromass. While forest biomass stores carbon largely above ground in woody stems, grassland soil carbon remains insulated from surface wildfires. Post-fire regimes allow grassland carbon to re-enter vegetative cycles rapidly without net atmospheric release.

Specialised endemic fauna depend exclusively on the micro-topography and open architecture of ancient grasslands:

• Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps): The Wildlife Institute of India reports fewer than 140 wild individuals surviving in Thar desert grasslands, serving as an obligate indicator of open savanna health.
• Lesser Florican (Sypheotides indicus): Endemic bustard species requiring undisturbed mosaic grasslands for seasonal breeding and lekking displays.
• Carnivore Guilds: The Indian Wolf (Canis lupus pallipes), Blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra), and Caracal depend on contiguous open terrain for hunting and pack dynamics.

Colonial revenue systems in British India systematically categorised non-forested, untilled landscapes as unproductive wastelands because they yielded no timber or agricultural land tax.

This fiscal bias persisted in post-independence land administration:

• The Wasteland Atlas Mapping: The Wasteland Atlas of India, compiled by the Department of Land Resources alongside the ISRO Space Applications Centre, maps nearly 70% of Open Natural Ecosystems as wastelands.
• Extensive Geographic Extent: Semi-arid Open Natural Ecosystems cover approximately 300,000 to 320,000 square kilometres, representing 10% of India's geographical expanse.
• Protection Deficit: Despite supporting unique biodiversity and pastoral livelihoods, less than 5% of these biomes fall within India's formal Protected Area network.

Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) funding has inadvertently incentivised ecological destruction by financing monoculture tree plantations across native grassland biomes.

Target-driven afforestation initiatives treat open biomes as blank spaces for tree planting. Plantations of exotic and invasive species such as Prosopis juliflora and Eucalyptus alter soil hydrology, disrupt open flight paths for heavy birds like bustards, and suppress indigenous grasses.

In the high-altitude Shola-grassland mosaics of the Western Ghats, historical plantations of Acacia mearnsii (black wattle) and Eucalyptus have severely depleted montane grassland cover. These invasive woody canopies desiccate mountain catchments and impair downstream hydrological flows.

Conversely, in the Banni grasslands of Gujarat, research indicates that soil organic carbon densities reached 142.72 tonnes of carbon per hectare in native grassland plots where Prosopis juliflora was systematically eradicated. This empirical evidence directly contradicts the administrative premise that establishing tree cover uniformly maximises carbon sequestration.

Ecological governance requires aligning domestic conservation practices with constitutional mandates and international commitments:

• Constitutional Directive: Treating ancient biomes as disposable landbanks violates the mandate under Article 48A of the Constitution to protect and improve the natural environment.
• Intergenerational Equity: Diverting intact grasslands on the assumption that damage can be offset elsewhere through secondary replanting undermines intergenerational environmental equity.
• Limits of Offsetting: Secondary restoration provides valuable land stabilisation and erosion control, but it cannot replace the complex evolutionary legacy of primary biomes or serve as an offset licence for industrial diversion.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change must reform ecological restoration metrics by replacing crude tree-canopy targets with native biodiversity indicators and hydrological assessments.

A sustainable conservation roadmap requires four structural policy reforms:

1. Statutory Classification Reform: The Department of Land Resources must de-link Open Natural Ecosystems from the Wasteland Atlas, notifying them as ecologically sensitive biomes.
2. Re-orienting CAMPA Guidelines: Compensatory afforestation guidelines must prohibit planting trees within designated savanna, scrubland, and steppe habitats.
3. Landscape-Level Protection: Expand community-conserved reserves across the 300,000 square kilometres of semi-arid Open Natural Ecosystems, integrating pastoral grazing rights.
4. Targeted Ecological Metrics: Adopt the IUCN Red List Index and soil organic carbon health to evaluate habitat quality instead of measuring gross canopy cover.

• Ancient Evolutionary Heritage: Old-growth grasslands are millennia-old biomes shaped by natural fire and herbivore dynamics, possessing specialized underground root structures that secondary restorations cannot replicate.
• Belowground Carbon Stability: Grasslands sequester up to 90% of their organic carbon pool belowground, creating resilient carbon sinks that survive surface wildfires far more effectively than tree biomass.
• Administrative Wasteland Bias: Nearly 70% of India's 300,000 to 320,000 square kilometres of Open Natural Ecosystems are misclassified as wastelands, leaving 95% of these landscapes outside the formal Protected Area network.
• Afforestation Risks: CAMPA-funded monoculture tree planting and invasive species introduction severely degrade endemic grassland fauna habitats, including the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard.
• Metric Shift Required: Ecological policy must transition from gross tree canopy measurements to native biodiversity indices, indicator species health, and hydrological functionality assessments.