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 the Green Credit Programme is not
- It is not a carbon offset. A green credit is not measured in tonnes of CO2, so it should not be presented as cancelling out a stated amount of emissions.
- It does not make a company "carbon neutral" or "net zero". Those claims follow their own standards, such as ISO 14068 and the SBTi Corporate Net-Zero Standard.
- It is not a payment for planting trees anywhere. The operational methodology covers degraded forest land registered by State Forest Departments, not private gardens or farms.
- It is not a fixed carbon figure per tree. How much carbon a growing forest stores depends on species, age, soil, rainfall, survival and care, and the methodology rewards trees and canopy, not tonnes.
- It is not an investment product. The government has not set a price for green credits, and nothing in the Rules promises a financial return.
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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