Missing the forest for the trees, by design

The Green Credit Programme seems like an invitation to corporates to grab and destroy forest lands

The Green Credit Programme, launched by the central government a few months ago as a scheme that would incentivise environment-positive actions like afforestation, water conservation, reclamation of degraded land, and air pollution management has raised concerns and invited criticism from various quarters, including environmentalists and other experts. The government has presented it as an “innovative market-based mechanism designed to incentivise voluntary environmental actions across diverse sectors”. Under the programme, industries, communities or individuals engaging in activities like afforestation and conservation would earn “green credits” which can be traded in future for business ventures that involve clearing of forests. It is similar to the carbon credit programme but many hold the view that it will weaken environmental safeguards. Recently, 91 former civil servants wrote a letter to the government seeking scrapping of the programme as it would prioritise corporate convenience over environmental protection. A number of environmental and human rights organisations and individuals have also made the same demand. 

Critics have pointed out several negatives of the programme. Tree-planting under the programme would mostly be mono-plantations and it would give companies the right to fell dense forests and kill biodiversity to locate their projects there. There is no definition of degraded land, and that may lead to encroachment of tribal and pastoral community lands. The programme may make it easier for companies to get environmental clearance for their projects without fulfilling their obligations. It has also been dubbed as  “unscientific”. It is pointed out that tree-plantation is not always the best method for carbon sequestration and that different ecologies need different kinds of biodiversity. Uniform afforestation would “bring an end to the survival of many species” in the forests. The civil servants have said that “the government is trying to make it easy for entrepreneurs and industrialists to acquire forest land by permitting them to offer, in exchange, money in the form of green credits”.

The specifications about the number of trees and the forestry and horticultural species to be planted which existed in the draft scheme are not there in the final version. Credits are awarded not on the basis of the kind of trees planted but on the number of trees. A forest is an ecosystem; just some trees do not make it. The original plan had proposed that credits should be granted over a period of 10 years on the basis of the survival of trees. That and many other details were dropped later. The scheme in its present form is certain to be misused and is likely to turn out to be another legal means to damage forests and the cause of environmental protection.