As many as 13 degraded land parcels in Tamil Nadu measuring a total of 263.4 hectares will be restored under the Green Credits Programme (GCP).
This program is rolled out by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
It is a market-based mechanism designed to incentivise voluntary environmental actions across diverse sectors by individuals, communities, private sector industries, and companies.
The stakeholders can invest in restoring the degraded land and, in return, receive green credits that can be exchanged for compensatory afforestation when diverting forest land for non-forest purposes.
101 land parcels of 2,448.57 ha were identified and uploaded to the Green Credits registry web portal.
Of that, 13 (263.46 ha) have been approved and 19 (150.84) have been rejected.
The approved land parcels fall in Tiruvallur, Sivagangai, Dindigul, Erode, Salem, and Dharmapuri.