The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have announced India's first Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for forests, the Forest Stack Blueprint. The initiative aims to incorporate the same principles that have disrupted India's finance and healthcare systems – transparency, interoperability, and shared digital public goods – to the governance of natural resources. The blueprint was unveiled at a National Partnership Forum in New Delhi focused on scaling forest conservation using artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure for the future.

The Forest Stack aims to make the governance of forests more transparent, measurable, and scalable. At the heart of the Forest Stack is the Forest Data Exchange, an interoperable data framework bringing together more than 50 different existing forestry and wildlife datasets. The centralized data store is designed to undergird the next generation of AI-enabled forest conservation applications, from predicting fire risk to monitoring biodiversity and wildlife.

Rajasthan has become the first state to employ this model broadly. It launched its "DigiVan" system in March 2025, for the digital monitoring of 3.3 million hectares of forest area. The platform has integrated over ₹650 crore worth of annual plantation budget into a system that has improved transparency and monitoring of over 2,000 plantation locations. The state government reported that more than seventy-five percent of all forest field officer have utilized the system, of which more than two hundred were fully trained to use the system. This rollout in Rajasthan is an application in the field to understand the Forest Stack model's potential.

To stimulate innovations, an Open Innovation challenge was conducted in Rajasthan and this process generated over 185 proposals from startup and applicants. The proposed solutions for this Open Innovation challenge included AI-based tools to predict fire risk and biodiversity mapping, rather demonstrating the functionality of open data to drive innovation. This is demonstrated through partnerships with PowerGrid, DCM Sriram, and AWS to build out this ecosystem of development.

The operational experiences from Rajasthan have been synthesized into the Forest Stack Blueprint, which provides a structured pathway for other Indian states to follow in implementing similar systems and covering all the dimensions from data preparedness through governance design. In order to facilitate expedited implementation, a supplemental open-source GitHub repository has also been made available that provides meta-analytical models that were validated in the study, these models could lead to significant reductions in time commitments for the implementation and data collection process (and in some instances, potentially by 50%).

This initiative represents a meaningful elevation and advancement towards data-driven environmental stewardship in India. By developing a shared digital backbone for forestry, the Forest Stack may improve the health and condition of forests, promote governance, and positively affect livelihoods to name a few. The forum concluded with a call to action to government institutions, research organizations, and the private sector to work collaboratively in building digital solutions for sustainable forestry to support the utilization of technology as an enabling piece of the sustainability and climate-ready governance puzzle.