Free from All Encumbrances: The Green Credit Programme and the politics of exclusion

INDIA’S GREEN CREDIT PROGRAMME (‘GCP’), established under the Green Credit Rules, 2023 (’the Rules’) and guided by the methodology for calculation of ’Green Credit’ in respect of tree plantation issued in February 2024 (’the Methodology’), is framed as an innovative, market-based response to the global climate crisis. It proposes a framework to reward environmentally positive actions through tradable Green Credits generated via activities such as tree plantation, watershed conservation, pollution reduction, and afforestation. However, even at its inception, the GCP reveals deep structural biases which prioritise technocratic control and administrative convenience over the constitutional and customary rights of forest-dwelling communities. This article critically examines the Rules and the Methodology, highlighting their focus on administrative control and market mechanisms while sidelining community rights and participation.

The Methodology represents the first detailed operationalisation of the Rules. It directed the State and Union Territory Forest Departments to identify degraded lands like open forests, scrublands, and wastelands, “under their administrative control” for tree plantation activities. Critically, clause 2 of the Methodology required that all land parcels used for plantations be free from all encumbrances and not less than 5 hectares in size. This clause appears bureaucratically neutral, but in practice, it reclassifies forest landscapes as vacant restoration surfaces devoid of human habitation or customary rights. The use of such ostensibly neutral language serves to categorise legally recognised forest rights as “encumbrances” and imposes procedural barriers through complex virtual platforms, thereby further marginalising forest-dwelling communities. 

Applicants, whether individuals, corporations, or institutions, could apply to the Administrator (which is the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (‘ICFRE’) according to the Rules) to undertake tree plantations, and upon payment of government-determined costs, state forest departments were authorised to implement restoration/tree plantation within two years. Once the tree plantation was certified complete, the Administrator would issue Green Credits “calculated at the rate of one Green Credit per tree grown through the tree plantation on such land parcel, subject to minimum density of 1100 trees per hectare, based on the local silvi-climatic and soil conditions, on the certification of completion of tree plantation provided by the Forest Department concerned.” (paragraph 10) The planted area’s carbon and ecological value thus became the currency of environmental governance, while rights, livelihoods, and histories tied to that terrain were systematically abstracted out of view.