As many as 13 degraded land parcels in Tamil Nadu measuring a total of 263.4 hectares will be restored under the Green Credits Programme (GCP) rolled out by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), official sources said.
The Green Credits Programme has been pitched by the MoEFCC as a market-based mechanism designed to incentivise voluntary environmental actions across diverse sectors by individuals, communities, private sector industries, and companies. The stakeholders can invest in restoring the degraded land and, in return, receive green credits that can be exchanged for compensatory afforestation when diverting forest land for non-forest purposes.
Land degradation is known to occur due to deforestation or tree cover loss, soil erosion, shift in land use. While the actual restoration work will be done by the State Forest Department, two years after planting, and following an evaluation by the International Council of Forestry Research and Education — an autonomous body of the Union Ministry of Environment — each planted tree could be worth one green credit.
Of the several states that have identified and offered land parcels, Tamil Nadu is one. According to data from the Forest Department, 101 land parcels of 2,448.57 ha were identified and uploaded to the Green Credits registry web portal, of which 13 (263.46 ha) have been approved and 19 (150.84) have been rejected.
The approved land parcels fall in Tiruvallur, Sivagangai, Dindigul, Erode, Salem, and Dharmapuri. A total of 69 land parcels worth 2,034 ha are pending for verification, sources added.
Notably, as the Green Credits Programme allows companies to use green credits to comply with compensatory afforestation instead of providing an equivalent amount of non-forest land and pay authorities to afforest it, experts have cautioned that the programme may weaken regulations in favour of mining companies.
