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India launched its first-ever Guide to Grasslands and Other Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs) of India on 17 August 2026 at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
The Guide documents India's grasslands, savannas, deserts, scrublands, ravines, rocky plateaus and coastal open ecosystems, with thematic sections on pastoralism, fire ecology and carbon sequestration.
It was published by the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) under the aegis of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, with IUCN, the Centre of Excellence on Sustainable Land Management, ICFRE and ISRO's Space Applications Centre.
Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, in a video message, said grasslands, scrublands and ravines have long been judged by the absence of trees and dismissed as 'wasteland' despite sheltering endemic species and sustaining pastoral communities.
Discussions linked restoration of these ecosystems to India's Land Degradation Neutrality targets and called for better land-degradation assessment and landscape-level planning.
Open Natural Ecosystems are naturally treeless or sparsely wooded landscapes — grasslands, savannas, scrublands, ravines, rocky plateaus, deserts — that are ancient ecosystems in their own right, not degraded forests waiting to be replanted. Indian land records have historically classified much of this land as 'wasteland' or 'culturable waste', a colonial-era revenue category that treats the absence of trees as an absence of value. Two consequences follow. First, these areas become the default sites for compensatory afforestation, solar parks and plantation drives, which convert rather than restore them. Second, planting trees on a natural grassland destroys habitat for the species that need open ground — the Great Indian Bustard, the Indian wolf, the blackbuck, the lesser florican — while adding little carbon, because grassland carbon is stored largely below ground in soil and root systems rather than in visible above-ground biomass. That last point is why the Guide carries a dedicated section on carbon sequestration: it corrects a measurement bias that has consistently undervalued open ecosystems.
Simple Analogy: Calling a grassland a wasteland because it has no trees is like calling a coral reef barren because it has no soil.
The international convention on desertification, land degradation and drought; its central objective is Land Degradation Neutrality achieved through sustainable land and water management. Adopted in Paris on 17 June 1994, it entered into force on 26 December 1996.
Global conservation union best known for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species; a collaborator on the Guide and the body that administers the Bonn Challenge
The research organisation that published the Guide and organised the COP17 side event, working with government, scientific institutions and civil society
The ISRO centre that maps land degradation from satellite data and prepares the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India; a collaborator on the Guide
The apex forestry research body under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and a collaborator on the Guide
Adopted in Paris on 17 June 1994 and in force from 26 December 1996, it is the third of the three Rio Conventions. Note the sequence carefully: the UNFCCC and the Convention on Biological Diversity were opened for signature at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, while the UNCCD was negotiated afterwards and adopted in 1994 — a distinction examiners use.
The UNCCD's central objective and Sustainable Development Goal target 15.3. It defines a state in which the amount and quality of land resources needed to support ecosystem functions remains stable or increases, with new degradation offset by restoration elsewhere within the same land type — a balance, not a prohibition on all land conversion.
The law under which the Banni grasslands were declared a protected forest in May 1955 — an illustration of how India's open ecosystems are governed largely through forest law rather than through any dedicated grassland statute, which is part of the gap the Guide addresses.
The Guide spans the full latitudinal range of India's open ecosystems. In the north, the Terai grasslands run along the Himalayan foothills and the high-altitude Himalayan grasslands sit above the treeline. In the west lie the Thar desert of Rajasthan and the Banni grasslands of Kutch in Gujarat, the latter about 3,847 sq km and traditionally grazed by Maldhari pastoralists. The peninsular interior holds the Deccan savannas and the lateritic rocky plateaus of the Western Ghats foothills, while the ravines of the Chambal system and scrublands across the semi-arid belt complete the picture, alongside coastal open ecosystems. The Environment Minister's own reference point was Ajmer in Rajasthan, and the village-protected Oran and gauchar commons of that region — sacred groves and grazing commons that are community-governed rather than state-protected.
Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, it is the flagship species of India's open ecosystems. Its decline is the clearest illustration of the Guide's argument, since afforestation and infrastructure on grasslands remove exactly the open habitat it requires.
The Maldharis of Banni and the Oran and gauchar commons of Rajasthan are community institutions that have managed open landscapes for centuries; the Guide's section on pastoralism treats grazing as a management tool rather than a threat.
Grasslands store most of their carbon below ground in soil and roots, so carbon inventories built around above-ground biomass systematically undercount them — a measurement problem with direct consequences for which landscapes get restoration finance.
UNFCCC (climate), CBD (biodiversity) and UNCCD (land) are treated together in exams; the Guide sits at their intersection, since grassland restoration delivers on all three simultaneously.
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Conservation, Environmental Pollution and Degradation
General Awareness > Environment and International Organisations
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Environment conventions and India's restoration targets recur nearly every year in UPSC Prelims; grassland ecology and the Great Indian Bustard have appeared repeatedly since 2019
A naturally treeless or sparsely wooded ecosystem — grassland, savanna, scrubland, ravine, rocky plateau or desert — that is an ancient ecosystem rather than a degraded forest
A state in which land resources needed to support ecosystem functions remain stable or increase, with degradation balanced by restoration; the central objective of the UNCCD and SDG target 15.3
Community-protected sacred groves and village grazing commons, chiefly in Rajasthan
A global restoration initiative launched in 2011 aiming for 350 million hectares under restoration by 2030; India's pledge of 26 million hectares is the largest