Context
The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has issued the Green Credit Rules 2023, which formally established the Green Credit Programme (GCP) for India.
Green Credit Rules, 2023
- These regulations were notified on 12th October 2023 under the Environment Protection Act 1986.
- These regulations put in place a mechanism to inspire voluntary environmental positive actions ensuing in issuance of green credits.
- In its preliminary phase, voluntary tree plantation is envisaged on degraded land, waste land, watershed region, and setc., under the management and control of Forest departments.
Green Credit Programme (GCP)
- The Green Credit programme was launched by the Indian PM on the side-lines of COP 28 (held in 2023 at Expo City, Dubai, United Arab Emirates).
- It is a programme in the government’s Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) movement.
- The concept of LiFE was introduced by the Indian PM at COP26 (Glasgow) in 2021, to drive an international mass movement towards “mindful and deliberate utilisation” to protect and preserve the environment.
- The GCP introduces a market-based approach to incentivise eight identified environmental activities.
- The predominant objective was to set up a mechanism where participants should earn incentives in the form of ‘Green Credits’.
- The proposed GCP can be carried out in phases, with the preliminary phase focusing on water control and afforestation.
- Subsequent stages will cover activities such as
- Sustainable agriculture,
- Waste management,
- Air pollutants reduction,
- Mangrove conservation and restoration,
- Eco mark label improvement, and
- Sustainable building and infrastructure.
Implementation of the GCP
- Under the GCP, registered and authorised entities will pay to finance afforestation projects in precise tracts of degraded forest and desert. The real afforestation might be carried out by State Forest departments.
- Two years after planting and following an assessment through the International Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), every planted tree could be worth one ‘green credit score’.
- These green credits can then be utilized by companies which have diverted forest land for non-forest purposes and razed thousands of trees to offset some of their obligations under India’s compensatory afforestation laws.
- According to the reports, 10 States have recognized parcels of degraded forest land, amounting to about 3,853 hectares, that will be available for people, businesses, public and private sector units to earn and probably exchange green credits.
- Chhattisgarh and MP alone account for as much as 40% of the forest land made available.
Compensatory Afforestation
- Compensatory afforestation obliges any industry or institution that is given permission to raze forest and use that land for non-forestry purposes,
- To provide an equivalent quantity of non-forest land to forest government and
- Pay them to afforest that land.
- The circumstance is that such land be as near as possible to the forest tracts which have been razed.
- However, if such land is unavailable, twice the amount of ‘degraded’ forest land (normally land with very low tree density but that is officially marked as forest) may also be made to be had for compensatory afforestation.
- Additionally, companies must also compensate for the value of the forest ecosystem, called the ‘net present value’, which is lost due to the diversion of the forest land.
Issues with the Compensatory Afforestation and the GCP
- In several States, including Chhattisgarh and MP where large tracts have been traditionally diverted for mining, getting contiguous non-forest land for compensatory afforestation is tough.
- In reality, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, whose corpus comes from the environmental compensation money paid by companies and which is to be used by States for afforestation, has thousands of crores of unspent money.
- This is due to the fact appropriate land for regenerating forests, revenue or degraded, is unavailable.
- Green credits for afforestation are a manner to incentivise private investments in tree plantation.
- However, assigning a monetary price to such credits is difficult and linking green credit to compensatory afforestation activities is even trickier.
Conclusion
- Compensatory afforestation isn’t always the only purpose of this scheme and the scheme is supposed to encourage corporate social obligation moves as well as regeneration.
- However, provisions which include the time taken (currently two years) to approve a piece of land as having generated credit, had been given more importance.
Source: The Hindu
UPSC Mains Practice Question
Q.Should the pursuit of carbon credits and clean development mechanisms set up under UNFCCC be maintained even though there has been a massive slide in the value of a carbon credit? Discuss with respect to India’s energy needs for economic growth. (2014)
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