Environment › Climate negotiations and finance
India's climate policy: NDCs, net zero and adaptation
India's own climate commitments and plans: its Nationally Determined Contribution and net zero target, the national and State action plans, adaptation from the city to the village, and the forest carbon sink. Prelims has asked about Intended Nationally Determined Contributions.
Showing 2 of 5 subjects, those that changed from 1 to 15 September 2026.Show all
The forest carbon sink
Copy link to The forest carbon sinkPrelims and Mains
A sink is credited only where it can be demonstrated, so the way India measures its forests decides what it is able to report.
- The sink target is an additional store of carbon in forest and tree cover, counted from 2005 and reported in tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.
- The Forest Survey of India (FSI) assesses forest and tree resources every two years and publishes the India State of Forest Report.
- Because forest cover is counted by canopy rather than by origin, a plantation and a natural forest enter the figure alike.
- At an FSI workshop the Environment Minister tied the enhanced 2035 sink target to how forests are measured, and asked for new assessment technology.
- The Green India Mission and Nagar Van Yojana are among the schemes through which the Centre supports States in raising cover.
What changed
10 Sep 2026
13 Aug 2026Updatenewly added
- Approved offset methods under India's carbon market now include afforestation of degraded mangrove habitat and improved rice cultivation, and 4,391 hectares of degraded forest land in twelve States had been identified under the Green Credit Programme by March 2026.
- The India State of Forest Report 2023 puts forest and tree cover at 25.17 per cent of the country, made up of 21.76 per cent forest cover and 3.41 per cent tree cover.
- No shared register stops the same land being counted for a carbon project, a green credit, compensatory afforestation and a restoration scheme at once.
Mains: a quantified sink pledge needs a record of land, parcel by parcel, that does not yet exist.
See also: MISHTI · The Green India Mission
Panchayats in climate planning
Copy link to Panchayats in climate planningPrelims and Mains
India's adaptation planning is written in the National Action Plan on Climate Change of 2008 and the State Action Plans beneath it, and there it stops.
- There is no planning framework below the State, though climate risk differs from one village to the next.
- Adaptation carries no budget line of its own, so the works are paid for out of existing schemes such as the rural employment guarantee.
- The 73rd Constitutional Amendment inserted Part IX, and Article 243G lets a State devolve planning for economic development and social justice to its panchayats.
- The Eleventh Schedule subjects are adaptation subjects: agriculture, minor irrigation, watershed development, social forestry and drinking water.
- The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, carries panchayat law into Scheduled Areas, where the Gram Sabha protects community resources and approves local plans.
- Climate priorities would enter this system through the Gram Panchayat Development Plan.
- Bela Gram Panchayat in Maharashtra is India's first net zero panchayat.
- What is asked for is stronger funds, functions, functionaries and data, with clear targets and no parallel bodies alongside the panchayat.
What it can carry
- Crop diversification
- Rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge
- Reviving water bodies
- Afforestation and social forestry
- Renewable energy and waste management
What stops it
- Weak technical capacity to assess climate risk
- Little local data on rainfall, groundwater and vulnerable groups
- Limited finance
- Plans made as paperwork rather than through Gram Sabha discussion