How do trees store carbon, and why is there no fixed number per tree?
Trees pull CO2 from the air and lock carbon into wood, roots and soil. Here is how that works, how India measures forest carbon, why per-tree figures vary so widely, and why permanence matters.
How much carbon do India's forests hold?
The India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023, released by the Forest Survey of India in December 2024, reports (via PIB):
| Measure | ISFR 2023 estimate |
|---|---|
| Total forest carbon stock | 7,285.5 million tonnes of carbon |
| Change since ISFR 2021 (7,204 million tonnes) | +81.5 million tonnes |
| Annual increase | 40.75 million tonnes of carbon (149.42 million tonnes CO2e) |
| Forest and tree cover | 827,357 sq km, 25.17% of India's area |
PIB also reported that India's carbon sink in forest and tree cover reached 30.43 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, an additional 2.29 billion tonnes since 2005. India's 2015 Nationally Determined Contribution, unchanged in the 2022 update, aims for an additional 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030. India's newer NDC for 2031-2035 (UNFCCC, April 2026) sets a sink of 3.5 to 4.0 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2035 compared with 2005.
These are national estimates with their own uncertainty, built for the whole country, not for single trees.
Sources: 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 4 (AFOLU), Chapter 4 Forest Land; 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Volume 4, Chapter 2 Generic methodologies (carbon pools, gain-loss and stock-difference methods); 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Volume 4, Chapter 4 Forest Land; PIB, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav releases India State of Forest Report 2023 (December 2024); PIB backgrounder, India's Green Recovery: Forest and Tree Cover Grows (27 December 2024); Forest Survey of India, India State of Forest Report 2023, Volume I; PIB, Carbon stock in India increases by 79.4 million tonnes (ISFR 2021); IPCC AR6 Working Group III, Summary for Policymakers (2022); IPCC AR6 Working Group III, Chapter 12 Cross-sectoral perspectives (2022); India's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (2015), UNFCCC NDC Registry; GHG Protocol, Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Revised Edition); Verra, VCS AFOLU Non-Permanence Risk Tool; UNFCCC: India's Updated First Nationally Determined Contribution under Paris Agreement (2021-2030), August 2022; UNFCCC: India's Nationally Determined Contribution (2031-2035), April 2026
This article was prepared with AI assistance and checked by the GreenEye team against the sources shown in each section.
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