Green credits scheme: Retd civil servants urge Centre to recall tree plantation notification

New Delhi: A group of retired civil servants on Tuesday requested the Centre to withdraw a notification issued under the Green Credits Programme, alleging that it would make it easy for corporates to obtain forest land for their projects which would lead to an "ecological disaster".

They said that if the notification is not withdrawn, the livelihoods of millions of pastoral and semi-pastoral communities would also be impacted.

Launched in October last year, the Green Credits Programme is a market-based mechanism rewarding different voluntary environmental actions by individuals, communities and the private sector.

Notified on February 22, the rules for the calculation of green credits in respect of tree plantation said that any individual or private entity can now undertake plantation on degraded land, including open forest and scrubland, wasteland, and catchment areas, and earn green credits, which can be traded and serve as a metric for corporate social responsibility.

The notification also said that the green credits generated could be exchanged for "meeting the compliance of the compensatory afforestation in case of diversion of forest land for non-forestry purposes under the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam,1980".

In a letter to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) alleged 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), instead of land for land as was the case so far".

According to the guidelines issued under the amended Act, compensatory afforestation is to be raised on suitable non-forest land, equivalent to the area proposed for diversion, at the cost of the user agency.

Compensatory afforestation can also be raised on degraded land, twice in the extent of the forest area diverted, in case of the projects implemented by the central government or public sector undertakings.

"When forest land can be so easily obtained by private entrepreneurs, it does not take much imagination to realise that the extent of land legally classified as forests at present will steadily shrink until there is virtually nothing left. A new set of Green Credit invaders may ask for diversion of some of our densest and best-protected forests for commercial purposes like mining, industry, and infrastructure," the letter signed by 91 retired civil servants read.

"Quick, smooth, and easy diversion of our forest lands in favour of user agencies is apparently the sole intention of this set of Green Credit rules. We urge the MOEFCC to recognise this danger and withdraw the Green Credits notification expeditiously," they said.

According to foresters and environmentalists, the group said, a dangerous fallout of this order is the “ecological disaster” that will follow by planting up all kinds of ecosystems with trees.

“Measuring forests merely by tree count is totally wrong. All forest lands, whether grasslands, wetlands, deserts, scrub forests or open forests are ecological entities in themselves. They harbour a wide variety of animal species endemic to the Indian subcontinent, such as the Great Indian Bustard, the Lesser Florican, blackbucks, wolves, etc. Taking up plantations in these areas will mean an end to the survival of these and other species," the retired civil servants said.

"But it is not merely the lives of animal species that are at stake. The livelihoods of millions of pastoral and semi-pastoral communities depend on these ‘scrub’ and ‘wastelands’, and they will be directly and adversely impacted by this scheme," they said.

The group alleged that ‘green credits’ as a concept are 'anachronistic' and have been seen as a tool for monetising the natural environment and handing it over to corporates for exploitation.

"To allow the transfer of pristine forest lands to corporates, in exchange for green credits earned by them, by getting them to fund the forest department to plant degraded forest lands, is shocking indeed. More so, because the ecological values of these lands can be restored by the forest department itself, with the funds already at its disposal,” they said.

"This is a transaction weighted heavily in favour of Big Capital. If the government is really serious about conservation with financial help from the private sector, it should permit relevant, impactful conservation projects as eligible activities under the law governing corporate social responsibility," the letter said.