From the mountains to the tap found that plantations consume a relatively large amount of water compared to South Africa's natural vegetation: grasses or shrubs. Commercial plantations located in 10 per cent of the country (that generate 60 per cent of the annual runoff, normally) are estimated to reduce runoff by 3.2 per cent.

"In India, large tree-planting schemes might provide benefits at local levels, but they would harm communities downstream of water catchments,' says the report. It blames the National Water Policy, 1987 for propagating the erroneous theory that forest cover conserves water in catchments. Explains Ashwin Gosain of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, "Plantations have reduced water yields by 16 per cent to 26 per cent in Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh'.