This year marks a first for the long-standing relationship between India and the United Nations. For the first time ever, India will host World Environment Day (WED). With a population of 1.2 billion people, a rapidly growing economy and a diverse cultural past, present and future there is enormous potential for India to catalyze and to champion sustainable development nationally and internationally. This year’s WED theme is ‘Forests: Nature at Your Service’. It speaks to the intrinsic connection between livelihoods and human well-being and the health of forests and forest ecosystems. India has shown leadership by, for example, instituting a tree-planting system to combat land-degradation and desertification, including windbreaks and shelterbelts to protect agricultural land. The recently launched Mission for Green India, as part of National Action Plan on Climate Change, aims at qualitaitive as well as quantitative improvement in forest cover over 10 million hectares, with an estimated outlay of about US$10 billion over the next 10 years.