On a rainy August morning, Sachin Hichami walked into the office of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate in Etapalli. The bright, 20-year-old farmer from the village of Krushnar was troubled. His rice crop was failing because of unseasonal rains and he didn’t know what to do. In the last couple of years, erratic rainfall and extreme weather events have made agriculture unviable for many families in his village and Sachin was looking for alternative livelihood options.
Etapalli, a predominantly tribal block in Gadchiroli, the easternmost district of Maharashtra, is plagued by multiple problems: Left-wing extremism, poor infrastructure, malnutrition and now failing agricultural harvests. Since these problems are fairly prevalent throughout the district, Gadchiroli is classified as an aspirational district by the NITI Aayog.
In Etapalli, the average landholding per household is about three acres with a harvest of a single crop of paddy during the Kharif season. Annual per capita income is approximately Rs 10,000 (assuming a family size of five). There is hardly any second or third crop due to a lack of irrigation facilities and as a result the community also relies on minor forest produce such as bamboo, mahua, tendu and chironji for supplemental income. The district, with approximately 67 per cent of its land being officially classified as forest, has one of the highest forest covers in the country.
Forests around the world are rapidly declining. It is estimated that we lose between five to 10 million hectares of forest every year, leading to deforestation becoming one of the largest sources of carbon emissions. The world’s forests are a major carbon sink, holding over 860 million gigatonnes of carbon or the equivalent of a century of fossil fuel emissions at our current rates as per the World Resources Institute. As a result, efforts to prevent forest loss and increase forest cover are attracting significant investments from governments, philanthropists and corporations. Some of the largest non-government investments in forestry are now coming through carbon finance, with forestry credits accounting for nearly 50 per cent or more of the carbon offsets being sold in the voluntary markets.
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Need for supplemental income
Sachin’s situation is not uncommon. Across Maharashtra, more and more farmers are abandoning agriculture for other livelihoods or are looking at ways to supplement their agricultural income as yields and profits decline because of climate change-induced erratic rainfall, land degradation, reduced water tables and uncertain agricultural prices. This is pronounced social injustice: the agrarian and tribal communities of India have contributed nearly nothing to greenhouse emissions over the last century, but are pegged to be the worst affected by climate change. As per data provided by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, in the last six years alone, 69 million hectares or 40 per cent of total cultivated land suffered devastating crop losses, which negatively impacted farmer income.
The Sub-Divisional Magistrate believed a high-quality, forestry-based offsets project could help farmers like Sachin earn a steady source of supplemental income from the sale of climate-resilient forest harvest, and carbon credits while also protecting and restoring the declining forest cover. The project, through reforestation and assisted natural regeneration, also had the potential to bring back lost biodiversity in the region. Unsustainable harvesting and widespread forest fires have led to a dramatic decline of tree species like amla, hirada, and beheda which were once abundant.
Nature-based carbon offset projects, if designed well and executed correctly, can help farmers like Sachin, who are victims of climate change become climate stewards. These projects offer the dual benefit of helping communities both mitigate and adapt to climate change. As the climate warms, rainfall patterns become more erratic and extreme weather events (like cyclones, floods, pest attacks) become more frequent, investing in increasing ecosystem resilience pays off. Biodiverse forests and agricultural farms are better able to adapt to rapidly changing weather.
So in the case of Sachin and other farmers in Etapalli who have been relying only on the harvest from rice as their primary source of income, diversifying their growing practices to include bamboo and other fruit and wild trees (like amla, hirada, beheda, mahua, chironji, bael, arjun) can improve biodiversity, give them income from additional sources like sale of carbon offsets or sustainably harvested forest produce and increase climate-resilience (because pest attacks or erratic rainfall destroys certain types of harvest, but not all of them). These trees also sequester carbon dioxide from the air and their leaf litter helps increase soil organic carbon and microbial diversity.
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Collaborative carbon offset project
Sachin and some other farmers from Krushnar in Etapalli are now part of a carbon credit project being implemented by Farmers for Forests (F4F), a social enterprise based in Pune that is working on protecting and restoring India’s biodiverse forest cover in close collaboration with communities. The project, developed with support from philanthropic and CSR donors, is spread across 1,000 hectares (2,400 acres) and six districts in Maharashtra and works on increasing tree cover on unused agricultural and common lands.
Land selection and afforestation are done keeping in mind land tenure issues, soil health, water availability and ecological viability. Farmers are provided with extension services, saplings, support on irrigation and fencing, organic fertilizers and mulch during plantation worth nearly Rs 55,000. Farmers are only required to pay 10 per cent of the total cost. Plantation farmers are provided with cash or labour support either through the organisation or through government schemes to help them get a good harvest from the crop and make sure that the trees are healthy. Carbon sequestration, tree health and tree count are monitored through in-field measurements and drone and satellite data to get accurate estimates of how much carbon is being sequestered by the trees and soil of each individual farmer. 70 per cent of the gross carbon revenue generated will be kept by the farmer, while 30 per cent will be kept by the organisation to cover its operating expenses.
On average, a farmer in the F4F programme can conservatively earn anywhere between Rs 25,000 to Rs 65,000 per acre per year from the forest harvest and the carbon revenue combined, a significant improvement from the Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 they are earning now through paddy cultivation. Moreover, harvest from paddy has been frequently failing in Gadchiroli due to the unseasonal rains and flooding.
A carbon offsets project while sequestering carbon can also be used effectively to bring about increased community awareness.
In addition to helping communities transition to agroforestry and forestry models to supplement their agricultural income, the carbon credit project also trains farmers and communities on the carbon markets and imparts scientific and climate education to schools in the area.
Under the carbon credits project, F4F, in collaboration with the Tribal Development Department in Maharashtra is also running a Mobile Science Laboratory. This imaginatively designed bus, staffed by three teaching fellows, contains scientific equipment that can be used to demonstrate and teach various experiments and scientific concepts to children in the eighth to 12th grades. The van is currently operational in 16 residential Ashram schools in the Etapalli, Bhamragad and Dhanora blocks of Gadchiroli. In addition to teaching children physics, chemistry and biology, the syllabus also includes contemporary topics in climate change, ecology and astronomy.
Clearly, carbon offsets have the potential to help farmers restore unused agricultural land, degraded forest land and increase their income. However, a few key questions still linger: will carbon markets fairly compensate farmers for the ecological restoration work they are undertaking and are carbon markets actually making a dent in our climate-change fight?
Given India’s large agrarian community, classification as a megadiverse country in species richness and status as the global frontrunner in the fight against climate change, it is uniquely poised to take advantage of growing carbon market activity to increase farmer prosperity and restore ecological richness. To do this successfully, it is important that farmers be provided timely and accurate information on how the carbon markets work, given a significant share of the carbon revenue and be supported with market linkages for the forest produce they generate. Unlike agriculture, harvest from forests can take between four to 15 years to bear financial return. To get farmers to adopt horticulture and forestry on a larger scale, it’s important for them to have financial support to plant trees and put in the inputs and care needed to get a quality harvest. This is where government policy and the philanthropic sector can play a key role.
For an individual farmer, navigating the myriad requirements, stringent rules and complex sequestration calculations of the carbon market can be a daunting task. However, with the right information, adequate financial support and transparency on project costs and revenues, farmers like Sachin, can effectively leverage the carbon market to mitigate their current economic woes while playing a key role in helping the world sequester carbon and restore ecosystems, becoming the true climate champions.
Shubham Gupta is a 2019 batch IAS officer currently posted as Assistant Collector, Etapalli and Project Officer, Integrated Tribal Development Project, Bhamragad. He tweets @ShubhamGupta_11. Krutika Ravishankar is a co-founder at Farmers for Forests, which protects and restores biodiverse forest cover in close collaboration with communities. Views are personal.
This is the final article of a three-part series that explores India’s climate crisis and the potential of carbon credit markets to mitigate environmental damage and spur economic development. Read all the articles here.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)