Current Environment: Reports: Living Planet, forests, biodiversity and

Reports: Living Planet, forests, biodiversity and

Environment reports are the report cards of nature. UPSC often asks which body publishes which report, so match each report to its publisher. The table below lists the main ones:

WWF press release 7 Oct 2026, ISFR 2023 (PIB).

Living Planet Report

The Living Planet Report is the flagship study of WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). It is released every two years, and the first edition came out in 1998 (WWF). Its core is the Living Planet Index, built with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Living Planet Report 2026: the index covers 35,803 population trends of 5,790 species. A population here means a group of one species in one place, such as the elephants of one forest. The index measures the average change in population size, not the number of animals or species lost.

An everyday example makes this clear. Suppose three villages had 100 sparrows each in 1970. Today one village has 10, one has 50 and one has 100. The average fall is 47%, even though no village lost all its birds. So a 73% decline does not mean 73% of all animals have died. It means tracked populations shrank by 73% on average.

The worst fall is in freshwater life (−85%), because rivers and lakes face dams, pollution and over-fishing at once. Not all news is bad. About half the populations tracked are stable or increasing. Tigers, green turtles, southern African elephants and bluefin tuna are cited as recoveries, which shows that protection works.

India State of Forest Report

The India State of Forest Report (ISFR) is published by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun, under the Environment Ministry. It has come out every two years (biennially) since 1987. ISFR 2023, released in December 2024, is the 18th edition (PIB, December 2024).

FSI uses two tools. Satellite images map forest cover from space. A field survey, the National Forest Inventory, counts trees on the ground to estimate growing stock (the volume of wood) and carbon stock (FSI, ISFR 2023).

Two terms matter here:

• Forest cover is all land over 1 hectare with tree canopy density above 10%, whoever owns it.
• Tree cover is small patches and scattered trees outside forests, such as trees along roads and on farms.

Per ISFR 2023, total forest and tree cover is 8,27,357 sq km, which is 25.17% of India’s geographical area. Forest cover is about 7,15,343 sq km (21.76%) and tree cover 1,12,014 sq km (3.41%) (PIB, December 2024). The National Forest Policy 1988 wants 33% of the area under forest or tree cover, so India is still about 8 percentage points short of that goal.

Biodiversity and state of environment reports

Biodiversity reports: IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) is to nature what the IPCC is to climate. It was set up in April 2012 in Panama City as an independent intergovernmental body, with its secretariat in Bonn, Germany (IPBES). In December 2024 it assessed the nexus (close link) of biodiversity, water, food and health, and also transformative change, meaning deep changes in how societies work.

State of environment: the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based research group, publishes an annual ‘State of India’s Environment’ report.

What UPSC asks: Prelims: report-publisher match (LPR by WWF, ISFR by FSI, IPBES assessments). Mains: limits of the LPR method, forest cover vs the 33% target.