Key Terms & Concepts — UPSC Mains
Trees Outside Forests (TOF)
"An internationally recognised forestry accounting category covering tree cover on non-forest land, such as farm boundaries, roadsides and riverbanks, distinct from legally classified forest land."
Trees Outside Forests (TOF) is a forestry and land-use accounting category, used internationally by the FAO and domestically in India's State of Forest Report, referring to tree cover growing on land that is not legally or administratively classified as forest, including agricultural field boundaries, roadsides, canal and riverbanks, and other non-forest land. The category matters because India's forest-cover accounting and much of its afforestation policy have historically focused on land legally classified as forest, even though a large share of realistic new-tree-plantation potential, particularly in water-scarce, agriculturally dominant states, lies outside that classification. TOF plantation also typically falls outside the stricter clearance requirements of forest-conservation statutes such as the Van (Sanrakshan evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, which govern land classified as forest, making it administratively faster and simpler to execute at scale. Several Indian states have built specific policies around this category. Rajasthan's Mission Hariyalo Rajasthan, formalised through a Trees Outside Forests Policy in August 2026, targets large-scale plantation on non-forest land with a reported goal of roughly 50 crore trees over five years, illustrating how TOF has become an operative policy category rather than merely a statistical classification.
A useful GS3 environment fact for distinguishing forest-cover statistics from actual tree-cover statistics, and for explaining why non-forest-land afforestation can scale faster than forest-land plantation.
- 1 Internationally recognised forestry category (FAO) for tree cover on non-forest land
- 2 Covers farm boundaries, roadsides, canal banks, riverbanks and similar land
- 3 Reported in India's State of Forest Report alongside forest-cover data
- 4 Typically outside the stricter clearance regime of forest-conservation law (Van Adhiniyam)
- 5 Administratively faster to scale than plantation on legally classified forest land
- 6 Rajasthan's Mission Hariyalo Rajasthan (Trees Outside Forests Policy, 2026) targets ~50 crore trees over 5 years
- 7 Distinguishes 'tree cover' statistics from 'forest cover' statistics in policy debates
Rajasthan's Trees Outside Forests Policy targeted riverbanks, drains and roadsides specifically because such land falls outside the Van (Sanrakshan evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam's stricter clearance requirements, allowing faster plantation at scale.
