Green Credit Programme India: Rules, Tree Plantation and How It Differs from Carbon Credits
What India's Green Credit Programme is, who runs it, how the tree plantation rules changed from February 2024 to August 2025, what green credits can be used for, and why they are not carbon credits.
Overview
The Green Credit Programme is a voluntary Government of India scheme that rewards environmental actions with "green credits", under the Green Credit Rules, 2023, notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 12 October 2023. As of October 2026, the working activity is tree plantation and eco-restoration on degraded forest land. Green credits are not carbon credits.
Photo: "Afforestation at Kanakakunnu" by BemanHerish, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This article explains, in plain language, what the programme is, who runs it, how the tree plantation rules have changed since 2024, what green credits can and cannot be used for, and how they differ from carbon credits. Each rule is given with its date, because the rules have already been revised once.
Sources: Gazette of India: Green Credit Rules, 2023, S.O. 4458(E), MoEFCC, 12 October 2023 (copy hosted by Puducherry DSTE); Gazette of India: S.O. 884(E), Methodology for calculation of Green Credit in respect of Tree Plantation, MoEFCC, 22 February 2024; PIB: Parliament Question, Green Credit Programme (MoEFCC, 16 March 2026); PIB: Notification issued for Green Credit Program (GCP) and Ecomark scheme (MoEFCC, 13 October 2023); PIB: Year End Review 2023, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change; Green Credit Programme portal: Frequently Asked Questions (ICFRE/MoEFCC); PIB: Parliament Question, Indian Carbon Market (MoEFCC, 9 December 2024); Mongabay India: Green credit rules tweaked to favour canopy cover, remove trade provision (September 2025), secondary source for orientation
This article was prepared with AI assistance and checked by the GreenEye team against the sources shown in each section.
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