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 does it mean for you?
For individuals
Individuals can register on the portal, but in practice the operational activity involves paying for restoration of a registered forest land parcel and waiting at least five years for verification. If someone offers you "green credits" for trees planted on your own land, ask which notified methodology they are using; as of October 2026, the government describes only the degraded forest land method as operational.
For businesses
- Companies, public sector units, NGOs and other entities can take part through the portal.
- Before treating green credits as part of CSR spending, an ESG report or a compliance obligation, check the current notification and the CSR and SEBI rules that apply, with your own legal or compliance adviser.
- Do not report green credits as tonnes of CO2 removed or offset in a greenhouse gas inventory; green credits and carbon credits are counted in different ways.
- Keep records of land parcel, payments, monitoring and verification reports, because credits are issued only after verification.
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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