Why feasibility matters for land use projects in India [Commentary]

- India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme includes a voluntary offset mechanism, with agriculture and forestry proposed for phased inclusion. - India has an opportunity to learn from the weaknesses exposed elsewhere in the world. - Carbon credits could bring private finance into these landscapes, but AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use) needs a nuanced approach, one where carbon claims stay grounded in ecological and social reality. - The views in the commentary are that of the authors. India’s carbon market conversation is widening beyond energy and industry. Forests, farms, grasslands, wetlands, mangroves and rice fields are increasingly being viewed as spaces where climate action, ecological restoration and rural livelihoods can converge. Carbon credits are expected to help bring private finance into these landscapes. But the global experience of the voluntary carbon market shows that a project can be registered, verified and even generate credits without necessarily delivering the climate or community outcomes that buyers assume. After evaluating 2,346 carbon-crediting projects and nearly one billion tonnes of issued credits, a 2024 study in Nature Communications estimated that less than 16% of the credits examined, represented real emission reductions. The study does not mean that every carbon project has failed, but it shows how badly results can diverge from claims when baselines, additionality or monitoring are weak. Specific cases make the warning harder to ignore. In 2025, the carbon certifier Verra reviewed Zimbabwe’s Kariba REDD+ project and found that actual deforestation in the reference area was far lower than originally projected. Verra identified 15.22 million excess credits among 26.82 million credits already issued and said these could no longer be corrected through future monitoring periods because the project had withdrawn from its registry. Similarly, in 2024, Verra rejected 37 rice-cultivation projects in China. It sanctioned project proponents and validation bodies and required compensation for overissued credits after concerns were raised about project areas, additionality and emission-reduction calculations. Community governance can be equally decisive. The Northern Kenya Grassland Carbon Project was placed under quality review following legal concerns over community land and governance. It was reinstated in June 2026 only after an independently assessed process to confirm governance arrangements and free, prior and informed consent, including community registration, consultations and a ratification vote involving about 1,500 people. The lesson is not that grassland carbon is unworkable. It is that a technically sophisticated methodology cannot substitute for lawful tenure, participation and consent. These cases explain why feasibility must precede credit forecasts. In Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, or AFOLU, feasibility is not a routine pre-project formality. It is the process that tests whether a proposed carbon claim is supported by land history, ecology, measurable change, institutions and realistic economics. The timing is especially important for India. The Carbon Credit Trading Scheme includes a voluntary, project-based offset mechanism, with agriculture and forestry among the sectors proposed for phased inclusion. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) has already approved methodologies for afforestation and reforestation of degraded mangrove habitats, afforestation and reforestation of lands other than wetlands, and methane recovery from livestock and manure management. As this architecture develops, India has an opportunity to learn from the weaknesses exposed elsewhere rather than reproduce them. The first stage is pathway and land matching AFOLU which stands for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, is not a single project type. Afforestation, reforestation and revegetation; avoided deforestation; improved forest management; agricultural land management; grassland restoration; mangrove restoration; and methane reduction in rice or livestock systems each have different ecological and methodological requirements. The first feasibility question should therefore not be, “How many credits can this land generate?” It should be, “What activity is suited to this landscape, and under which methodology could it qualify?” For an afforestation or reforestation project, open land is not automatically eligible land. The assessment must establish historical land use, pre-existing woody biomass, whether a native ecosystem was cleared and whether soil, rainfall and tenure conditions can support the proposed vegetation. A project that mistakes scrub, natural grassland or seasonally used commons for “wasteland” may create ecological harm even if tree survival is technically possible. For avoided deforestation or forest degradation projects, the test is different. A project must show a credible baseline threat and identify the human drivers that the intervention can change. Historical forest loss, fire, grazing, fuelwood extraction, fragmentation and encroachment may all be relevant, but forest presence alone does not prove avoided emissions. If the projected baseline overstates future forest loss, credits may be issued for deforestation that was unlikely to occur, as illustrated by the Kariba case. Grasslands require their own logic. They cannot be treated as empty land awaiting plantation. Feasibility must examine whether the area has remained grassland, the roles of grazing and fire, changes in soil carbon, pastoral access and whether proposed management is realistic. Wetlands and mangroves are hydrological systems first and carbon assets second. Salinity, tidal exchange, sediment, water flow and connected habitats determine whether restoration is viable. In rice systems, alternate wetting and drying can reduce methane only where farmers have sufficient control over irrigation and can adopt the practice without unacceptable production risk. The second stage is evidence, not assumption Once the pathway is identified, technical feasibility must establish eligibility and a defensible baseline. Static land records or a single recent satellite image are rarely sufficient. Multi-temporal remote sensing — the analysis of satellite images captured over the same area at different points in time — can reveal land-use transitions, canopy trends, fire recurrence, changes in water spread, crop cycles, and land degradation. GIS can help define project boundaries, identify fragmented parcels and stratify the landscape for field sampling. But remote sensing is not a substitute for fieldwork. Satellite-derived land-cover or fractional vegetation-cover maps must be checked against field conditions, local land records and community knowledge. A wet patch visible after the monsoon may not be a restorable wetland. A planted area shown in a database may have poor survival. Credible feasibility, therefore, combines geospatial screening with ground validation and transparent uncertainty estimates. It must also test additionality: would the activity happen without carbon revenue? Government schemes, existing plantation commitments, legal requirements and common agricultural practice all matter. The evidence must explain why carbon finance changes the outcome. The third stage is institutional feasibility In India, a carbon project is never merely a collection of polygons, mapped land parcels or project boundary units shown in GIS. Land may be privately owned, leased, managed as a common, recorded as forest, or used under customary arrangements. Rights and responsibilities may differ from what a map or revenue record suggests. Feasibility must therefore clarify who holds the land or carbon rights, who can consent, who will implement the activity, and how long participation can be maintained. For smallholders, aggregation through farmer-producer organisations (FPOs), cooperatives or other local institutions may reduce transaction costs, but it also creates obligations around enrolment, data management and accountability. Benefit-sharing cannot be postponed until credits are sold. The project must specify who bears implementation and opportunity costs, how revenue will be distributed, what happens when prices fall, and how grievances will be handled. The Northern Kenya case shows that community governance and free, prior and informed consent are not optional safeguards; they can determine whether a project remains operational. The fourth stage is financial reality AFOLU projects incur costs long before their first issuance: mobilisation, parcel mapping, baseline studies, field inventories, documentation, validation, registration, implementation, monitoring and verification. Carbon removal projects may take years to generate meaningful volumes, while fire, drought, mortality or farmer withdrawal can reduce issuance, as in California’s forest offset programme, two verified wildfire reversals in 2015 and 2018 led to the retirement of more than 1.1 million credits. Revenue is back-ended; costs and risks are front-loaded. A financial feasibility model should therefore test conservative, moderate and optimistic scenarios for survival, adoption, credit yield, verification intervals and carbon price. It must account for buffer deductions, leakage, monitoring costs, taxes, registry fees and delays. A project that works only at the highest assumed price, or only if every farmer remains enrolled and every sapling survives, is not bankable. Scale also matters. A large theoretical potential spread across thousands of small, disconnected parcels may be less viable than a smaller, well-governed cluster. Feasibility should identify the minimum viable scale and determine whether aggregation and digital monitoring, reporting and verification can reduce costs without weakening consent or data quality. From promise to preparedness A credible feasibility assessment should end with a clear decision: proceed, redesign, pilot or stop. It should identify eligible land, a suitable methodology, measurable additional activity, governance and benefit-sharing arrangements, a monitoring plan, major risks and a realistic financial case. This does not diminish the potential of carbon finance. It protects it. The failures and corrections seen in forest, rice and grassland projects show that the market’s credibility depends less on how many credits are promised than on how carefully projects are designed before crediting begins. India does not need carbon claims detached from ecological and social reality. It needs projects that can withstand land history, field evidence, community consent, financial stress and independent scrutiny. Before the carbon credits come, something less visible but far more valuable must come first: feasibility. Banner image: A man navigates the waterways through the Picharavam mangroves, collecting wild halophytes have taken root alongside the salt-tolerant mangrove trees following restoration near Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi) Sayanta Ghosh is Associate Fellow and J.V. Sharma is Senior Director in the Land Resources Division at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).