Green India Mission

The Green India Mission is the flagship forestry programme of the India Government as part of their National Action Plan for Climate Change. The Green India Mission (GIM) recognizes that climate change phenomena can seriously affect and alter the distribution, type and quality of natural resources of the country and the associated livelihoods of the people.

• The Mission shall focus upon improving the density of forest cover, lay emphasis on biodiversity, water, improved biomass, carbon sequestration and addressing ecosystems like grasslands, wetlands, urban and peri-urban. The mission takes a holistic view of greening, not merely focusing on plantations to meet carbon sequestration targets. The Mission is also adopting a Landscape based Approach, in which interventions at a scale of 5000-6000 hectares at a time shall take place, simultaneous treatment of forest and non-forest areas, and addressing key drivers of degradation.

The GIM has a budget of Rs 46,000 crore (approximately USD 10 billion) over a period of 10 years. The objective of the Mission is to increase forest and tree cover in 5 million hectares of land, and improve the quality of forest cover in another 5 million hectares. There is a deliberate and significant focus on autonomy and decentralization. The GIM will be implemented through an autonomous organizational structure with a view to reducing delays and rigidity, while ensuring accountability. Local communities will be at the heart of implementation, with the Gram Sabha as the overarching institution overseeing Mission implementation at the village level, nested as a polycentric approach. With over 200 million people dependent upon forests for their livelihood, it is imperative to ensure their participation in any conservation, and improvement projects. An interesting feature of this Mission is the creation of a cadre of “Community Foresters”; youths culled from various forest dependent communities, to facilitate planning, implementation and monitoring of Mission activities at local levels.

Concerns by various NGOs have been raised over the viability of the targets set as a measure of the success of the Mission. Further, there is apprehension about the commodification of forests, by creating a system of carbon trading to encourage carbon storage, thus undermining the ownership rights of the local community by slowly denying them access to the forests.

Media reports indicates that the ministry of environment and forests may look for private sector participation in the Rs 46,000-crore Green India Mission and is set for operational convergence with other schemes like Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Rural Guarantee Scheme and Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority. The convergence of GIM with various other projects would help the government to develop the scheme on a cluster basis