Come up with a well-structured green peace programme: Experts

HYDERABAD: The ministry of environment released the Green Credit Programme (GCP)’ implementation rules 2023 on Tuesday. This initiative has been taken by the government to promote LiFe (Lifestyle for Environment), which aims at encouraging sustainable lifestyles by driving consumer and community towards behavioural changes to incentivize environment-friendly practices.

To achieve this objective, the government has come up with the Green Credit Programme (GCP) to create a market-based mechanism to provide incentives to various stakeholders in the form of green credits.

Stakeholders like individuals, far producer organisations, cooperatives, forestry enterprises, sustainable agriculture, local bodies, private sector and industries will be able to earn green credits for undertaking environment-friendly and sustainable development actions.

While the experts welcomed the move, they said that the programme might make things more complex and that a clearer framework was required from the government in terms of trading green credits.

Sai Bhaskar Reddy Nakka, international environment and development professional, speaking to Deccan Chronicle, said, “This initiative might complicate the aspects of equity and cross-sectoral justification as trading of credits in various sectors will be permissible. For example, an industrialist with heavy carbon emission will be able to buy credits from a farmer, who has taken to sustainable farming. Equating within the same sector will also be an issue considering that factors like funds and geography will also impact a person taking an eco-friendly initiative.”

Bhaskar further stressed that although incentivizing the actions taken by stakeholders was a good initiative, monitoring systems should be introduced to validate the green credits.

“Reducing pollution should be made more stringent instead of an escape mechanism. Adaptation is more important than mitigation. There is a possibility that credit transfers might lead to unethical activities”, added Bhaskar.

The government identified eight sectors for GCP, including tree plantation, water conservation, sustainable agriculture, waste management, air pollution measures, mangrove conservation and restoration and ecomark.

Green Credits will be tradable outcomes and will act as incentives, which will be made available to those engaged in environmental interventions. Environmentalist and public policy expert D. Narasimha Reddy stressed that oversight of the measurement of the green credit was very important as the exchange also involved carbon credits that could be traded.

“The aim of the programme should be to contain the pollution levels and take serious majors towards climate change. However, like the carbon credits trade, the green credits programme should not become a mechanism for responsible stakeholders to get through with their actions contributing to pollution and should rather promote a transformative economic system wherein the consumption has to change, so should the behavior. It should not become a means to exchange one’s bad for another person’s good”, added Donthi.