The GCP, which was introduced in October 2023, uses a market-based system to incentivize acts that are beneficial to the environment, such as reforestation and water conservation.
Concerned about the Green Credit Programme (GCP), more than 400 individuals, along with over 100 environmental and human rights organizations, have called on the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change to rescind the program. They claim it weakens regulations protecting forests and encourages further forest diversion for commercial purposes.
The GCP, which was introduced in October 2023, uses a market-based system to incentivize environmental positive acts including water conservation and afforestation, among others. Businesses, communities, or people who voluntarily participate in these activities will be rewarded with green credits that may be exchanged at a later date under the green credit regulations announced under the GCP.
The rights groups underlined in their eight-point appeal to the ministry that, rather than imposing legal restraints to conserve forests, the GCP harms the rights of populations that live near forests and encourages deforestation. The petition stated that the GCP “would only serve as another tool to enable the exploitation of natural resources at a time when there is a need to focus on strengthening the legal framework to ensure environmental protection.”
The groups pleaded with the government to properly assess the program’s long-term effects on the nation’s delicate ecosystems.
As part of its tree planting programs, the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change unveiled the technique for calculating green credits in February. This practice was described as “unscientific and unsustainable” in the petition.
It stated that haphazard tree-planting initiatives cannot be utilised as “credits” to make up for lost trees and valuable forests. It also said that the ecological importance of grasslands, marshes, and scrub woods in preserving biodiversity and soil quality is not taken into account by the GCP. The petition highlighted that “open forests have high carbon sequestration potential and form part of commons, providing livelihood to indigenous communities.”
The process for determining green credits was disclosed in February and said that those who are eager to start plantations must pay the government. Within two years, state forest agencies will be given the duty of planting trees on degraded land parcels. If there is a minimum density of 1,100 trees per hectare, the government will consider one growing tree to be equal to one green credit. According to the approach, companies may also utilize these credits as payment for complying with compensatory afforestation requirements when their projects involve tree cutting.
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties’ Lara Jesani, an attorney and organizing secretary from Mumbai, stated that this combined petition embodies the shared issues and criticisms that human rights and environmental rights organizations have been voicing since last year.
“Even though dense forests are being diverted, the program makes it easier for companies to comply with compensatory afforestation with plantations.” The plan has already designated almost 10,000 hectares of “degraded” land for plantations, but Jesani stated, “We are unsure of the specifics of these land parcels and whether rights of communities on such lands have been first settled.”
According to the petition, the project did not take into account ecological differences between different types of trees, and granting credits based just on tree counts was unclear and not scientific. The approach, it said, said nothing about the difficulties in a tree’s life or the subtleties of ecosystems in terms of habitats and rainfall zones.
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