Ensure safeguards for India’s carbon market, Pg10

Key Highlights:

• Carbon credits represent certified reductions of greenhouse gases like CO2, used by firms to offset emissions.
• India is establishing a Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS) with emission benchmarks for energy-intensive sectors .
• Agriculture-based carbon projects are lagging globally due to weak farmer engagement and training .
• The Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project faced scrutiny for bypassing consent and weakening local land rights.
• The Lake Turkana Wind Power project in Kenya fenced off community rangeland, restricting access for herders.
• India's CCTS focuses on procedures but lacks attention to land rights, consent, and equitable revenue distribution.
• A balanced regulatory architecture is needed in India to ensure transparency, benefit-sharing, and community rights in carbon markets.

Detailed Insights:

• Developing countries can pursue a more equitable path by decoupling growth from environmental harm through cleaner technologies and sustainable practices.
• Carbon credits are generated through mitigation activities like renewable energy and sequestration efforts such as reforestation and agroforestry.
• India's CCTS will include voluntary offsets, managed by a national registry and trading platform, with draft methods for biomass and low-emission rice cultivation.
• The Northern Kenya Rangelands Carbon Project was suspended by Verra due to flaws in soil carbon measurement and lack of consent from indigenous communities.
• Community conservancies in Kenya, intended for decentralized resource management, have faced criticism for top-down restrictions mirroring colonial-era control.
• Carbon projects in India risk disrupting access to grazing land and forest produce for tribal communities without proper consent and benefit-sharing.
• India needs a regulatory framework that guarantees transparency, formalizes benefit-sharing, and protects community rights without overregulation.

Key Concepts Involved:

• Carbon Credit: A certificate representing the removal of one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere.
• Carbon Sequestration: The process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide in plants, soil, or geological formations.
• Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC): The right of indigenous peoples and local communities to give or withhold consent to projects affecting their lands and resources.