Building Digital Public Infrastructure for India’s Natural Landscapes

The article argues that India should extend its successful digital public infrastructure model to nature and land governance. It cites extensive cadastral-map digitisation and unique identifiers for more than 36 crore land parcels as foundations for greater accountability. However, it stresses that landscapes can simultaneously hold different legal, ecological, administrative, and livelihood classifications. The proposed policy task is therefore to make these overlapping descriptions visible and comparable rather than reducing each parcel to one designation.

The opinion article argues that Canada should treat nature as vital infrastructure and create investment tools to finance its long-term protection. Its authors link the federal Force of Nature strategy with the Canada Strong Fund, presenting biodiversity conservation and economic investment as mutually reinforcing. They contend that pollination, food, forests, soils, and clean water underpin the economy, while biodiversity provides climate protection and supports private assets and conventional infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and sewers.