Policy and institutional issues in implementing Clean Development Mechanism Projects in the forest sector in India

Afforestation and reforestation projects have been included under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. This paper discusses the policy and institutional issues involved in operationalization of forestry activities under CDM in India. The paper also addresses the following issues: additionality and baseline, non-permanence, leakage, measurement, monitoring and verification of carbon stocks and transaction cost for implementing forestry projects in the Indian context. The strategy includes definition of eligible land categories, potential activities, size and scale of projects, institutions for implementing them, and capacity building needs and activities. India has implemented a large afforestation and reforestation programme covering an area of 1.0 to 1.2 Mha annually in the past two decades. Despite this large baseline afforestation and reforestation activity, there is a large potential for forestry projects under CDM. The Government of India should initiate proactive regulatory as well as promotional measures to attract CDM projects in the forestry sector. Intensively planned, implemented and monitored CDM projects in the forestry sector are likely to provide maximum socio-economic and environmental benefits. India has vast degraded or wasteland available for forestry projects, which can halt degradation, create rural employment, conserve biodiversity and ultimately enhance the livelihoods of rural and forest dependent communities. The Government of India will have to play a proactive role in promoting CDM projects by creating an enabling environment; a simple and transparent institutional structure, and approval processes. Through proactive planning and appropriate guidelines, the Ministry of Environment and Forests should ensure that CDM projects contribute to sustainable development and reinforce national sovereignity. A large number of CDM projects, implemented in different regions of India, incorporating innovative technical, institutional and financial interventions, could lead to a large positive impact on programmes aimed at forest conservation and regeneration, reclamation of degraded land and socio-economic development of rural communities, in a participatory way