Kerala Water Resources Minister Roshy Augustine addresses a buffer zone review meeting at the Idukki Collectorate on January 3, 2023. Photo: Special Arrangement The demarcation of a 1-km buffer zone around the protected forests in Kerala on the direction of the Supreme Court has raised serious concerns in society. While the creation and maintenance of buffer zone around ecologically sensitive areas are considered essential, the exercise is often beset by a paucity of reliable ground-level data. In its special report on Climate Change and Land- Summary for Policy Makers (2019), the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) stressed on improving sustainable land management ‘by increasing the availability and accessibility of data’ and termed it one of the near-term actions to address the issue of climate change and adaptation. However, micro-level land use statistics in Kerala, or for that matter of the entire country, is mostly conjectural with marginal ground input. According to official statistics, Kerala has 11,525 km2, or 29.7% of its total geographical area under forest cover. The category of dense and degraded forest …