India on Wednesday released draft rules for a market-based mechanism that will help the country meet a wide range of environmental goals by crediting activities ranging from tree planting and water conservation to waste management, air pollution reduction, and sustainable agriculture.
Through the scheme, India hopes to create a “mass movement” around positive environmental actions and realise a vision it calls ‘Mission LiFE’ – Lifestyle for the Environment.
Under the scheme, which will be voluntary, the government envisages a wide range of actors earning credits for various positive actions, including individuals, farmer producer organisations, cooperatives, forestry enterprises, sustainable agriculture enterprises, urban and rural local bodies, the private sector, industries, and organisations.
The government has so far identified eight categories that will qualify for green credits, and will initially select two or three activities within each category for a pilot phase, before gradually expanding eligible project types.
Tree planting, water conservation, sustainable agriculture, waste management, air pollution reduction, mangrove conservation and restoration, qualifying for the government’s Ecomark label, and sustainable buildings and infrastructure were listed as the chief categories.
India launches the scheme just as it is about to introduce a domestic voluntary carbon market, though market participants stressed the Green Credit Programme will go far beyond just carbon.
“India has truly strengthened its global leadership towards environmental sustainability through a pioneering and unique regulatory step to introduce the Green Credit Programme, which is far beyond just carbon but encompasses all major attributes of environment and social sustainability,” said Manish Dabkara, chairman and managing director of EKI Energy Services, India’s biggest carbon project developer.
“One of the major highlights of the draft notification is to provide regulatory provisions to account for individual and community actions, besides corporate and businesses, and incentivise them.”
The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education will administer programme, while a yet-to-be established steering committee will have the power to grant approvals on issues such as monitoring, reporting, and verification, and making recommendations to the government on activities and sectors that can be included in the scheme and efforts that can be undertaken to create demand.
Speaking to the Hindustan Times, legal and policy researcher Kanchi Kohli said the scheme should be seen as part of a package of reforms meant to integrate a compensatory afforestation mechanism with the goal of offsetting carbon emissions.
“There are three sets of considerations that these legal ‘reform’ processes can benefit from. First, are the post-independence legacy of unresolved forest ownership and governance rights. Second, relates to the ecological and biodiversity challenges of all afforestation and plantation programmes that have been raised over the years,” she said.
“Finally, there are the global critiques around carbon credit schemes, especially the risks they pose by reducing the value of forests as being fungible, tradable commodities. It will be useful for the draft rules process to take all these aspects into consideration through internal discussions and a public interface.”
The government will set up a trading platform for the green credits to trade on, as well as a registry, and various technical committees and experts will work on developing methodologies for different activities.
“To maintain fungibility across sectors, the environmental outcome, achievable by any Green Credit activity, will be based on equivalence of resource requirement, parity of scale, scope, size, and other relevant parameters, and will be considered for allocation of one unit of Green Credit in respect of each activity,” the draft said.
The draft programme design will be out for public consultation for 60 days.
By Stian Reklev – stian@carbon-pulse.com
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