Carbon management in Indian forests: a policy analysis to assess mitigation potential

The forest sector provides mitigation opportunities to address climate change. Afforestation and reforestation have been identified as important mitigation options. Thus, there is a need for estimating the mitigation potential at local, national and global levels. India has an ambitious plan to bring approximately 33% of its geographical area under forest cover. In this article, we analyze the mitigation potential of this policy over the period of 2010–2030, considering two scenarios: a rapid afforestation rate (scenario-2020, achieving the 33% goal by 2020) and a moderate afforestation rate (scenario-2030, achieving the 33% goal by 2030). Assessment using the generalized comprehensive mitigation-assessment process model shows that afforestation could mitigate 5.2 GtCO2 under scenario-2020 over the 2010–2030 period, compared with 3.96 GtCO2 under scenario-2030, over the same period. Furthermore, we show that the rapid afforestation scenario has the potential to offset approximately 9% of India’s average national emissions projected by five models, for the same period. The afforestation under the two scenarios provides an incremental mitigation potential of 1.8–3.2 GtCO2 over the baseline scenario, for the period of 2010–2030, with the potential to offset 3.0–5.4% of the average national emissions projected for the same period.