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.
What concerns have been raised?
When the first methodology came out in 2024, environmental groups and forest-rights petitioners argued that letting green credits count towards compensatory afforestation could make it easier to divert natural forests for projects, and that counting trees per hectare could encourage dense plantations on land, such as grasslands, that is not naturally forest. Experts also said that two years is too short to judge whether a plantation will survive.
The 2025 revision moved to canopy density, a five-year wait and a mix of native species, which addresses part of these concerns. Commentators still ask how verification will work in practice and whether five years is enough to show that restored forest will last. These are open questions as of October 2026.
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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