The Environment Ministry has issued a draft notification detailing a proposed ‘Green Credit Scheme’ that will incentivise a host of activities including afforestation programmes, water conservation, waste management and remedying air pollution by allowing individuals and organisations to generate ‘Green Credits.’ These credits, through a yet to be specified mechanism, can also be traded for money.
“A Green Credit Programme is proposed to be launched at national level to leverage a competitive market-based approach for Green Credits thereby incentivising voluntary environmental actions of various stakeholders. Apart from incentivising individual/community behaviour,” says the notification that is open to public comment for 60 days, “the Green Credit Programme will encourage private sector industries and companies as well as other entities to meet their existing obligations, stemming from other legal frameworks, by taking actions which are able to converge with activities relevant for generating or buying Green Credits.”
A senior official in the Ministry, who declined to be identified, told The Hindu that the government’s immediate priority was to “create supply (of Green Credits)” via voluntary actions and then “create demand by bringing in laws or rules that will incentivise companies and organisations to buy credits that can then be traded.”
The official said that unlike carbon markets, where only greenhouse gas emissions were traded, the Green Credit Scheme was “trickier” as it involved accounting for a wide range of actions.
The notification for instance lists out eight sectors, or activities, that can qualify for generating credits: Tree plantation-based Green Credit to promote activities for increasing green cover across the country through tree plantation and related activities; water-based Green Credit to promote water conservation, water harvesting and water use efficiency/savings, including treatment and reuse of wastewater; sustainable agriculture-based Green Credit to promote natural and regenerative agricultural practices and land restoration to improve productivity, soil health and nutritional value of food produced; waste management-based Green Credit to promote sustainable and improved practices for waste management, including collection, segregation and treatment; air pollution reduction-based Green Credit to promote measures for reducing air pollution and other pollution-abatement activities; mangrove conservation and restoration-based Green Credit to promote measures for conservation and restoration of mangroves; ecomark-based Green Credit to encourage manufacturers to obtain ecomark label for their goods and services and finally, sustainable building and infrastructure-based Green Credit to encourage the construction of buildings and other infrastructure using sustainable technologies and materials.
“There are a few examples globally but nowhere in the world is such a wide range of actions considered,” the official told The Hindu. The Green Credit Scheme, the notification says, followed from the principle of LiFE, often articulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “encourage sustainable lifestyles by driving consumer/community towards behavioural changes to incentivise environment-friendly practices.”
There will also be a system, the notification says citing examples, that will measure how many units of water conserved or land restored will be worth one Green Credit. A ‘steering committee,’ of government and private sector representatives will specify the details of implementing the programme and overall administration of the scheme will be under the Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education.
An expert, who declined to be identified, and was familiar with early consultations with the government on the scheme said that the draft was a good statement of intent but executing it and implementing a system would be extremely challenging. “First of all somebody has to establish the equivalence between various actions. In some countries, social services generate credits – taking care of the elderly for a certain number of hours, for instance, gets you some credit that you can exchange in a salon. However reducing environmental protection to money is a slippery slope. Monitoring, reporting and verification for even carbon dioxide is already challenging. So determining, for instance, how much water you saved is equivalent to a tonne of CO2 prevented from emissions, is much more difficult.”
