Green Credit Programme

About Green Credit Programme

• It aims to incentivise environmentally conscious practices and promote a sustainable lifestyle through a market-based mechanism.
• Green credits generated through such actions can be traded on a domestic market platform.
• According to rules, environment-friendly actions include
  • Tree plantation, water management, sustainable agriculture, waste management, air pollution reduction, mangrove conservation and restoration, ecomark label development, and sustainable building and infrastructure.
• As per the scheme, individuals,industries, farmers producer’s organisations (FPOs), urban local bodies (ULB), gram panchayats, and the private sector, among a host of other entities, will be able to earn green credit for undertaking environment-friendly actions.
• Under the scheme, registered and approved entities can pay to finance afforestation projects in specific tracts of degraded forest and wasteland. The actual afforestation will be carried out by State forest departments.
• In its initial phase, the GCP focuses on two key activities: Water conservation and Afforestation
• Implementing Agency: Two years after planting — and following an evaluation by the International Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), an autonomous body of the Environment Ministry — each planted tree could be worth one ‘green credit’.
• The Green Credit Registry and trading platform, being developed by ICFRE along with experts, would facilitate the registration and thereafter, the buying and selling of Green Credits.

Q1: What is Sustainable Development?

It is an approach to economic planning that attempts to foster economic growth while preserving the quality of the environment for future generations. For example, India's promotion of solar energy to balance growth with environmental protection is a perfect example.

Source: States offer up thousands of hectares of ‘degraded’ forest land for green credits