Srinagar, May 22 -- Kashmir has lost 15% of its forest cover since 1990. Temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average. Floods that once came every few decades now strike with alarming regularity.

Yet every year, crores of rupees arrive to fight these very problems. But the climate money seems to evaporate between government files and the vanishing forests.

Take the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, meant to replace every tree cut for development.

A recent audit found Jammu and Kashmir had spent only 38% of its allocated funds on actual afforestation. The rest disappeared into a maze of administrative expenses, questionable purchases and vaguely defined "capacity building" exercises.

In one telling example, officials in S...