Roadmap for Scaling Trees Outside Forests in India: Learnings from Select States on Policy Incentives, Enabling Conditions, and Barriers
This paper discusses a roadmap for growing more trees outside forests across India. It analyzes the main public policies that incentivize landholders to embrace agroforestry and other approaches to growing trees on farmland, in urban areas, and across other landscapes. It ends with concrete recommendations for policymakers that want to improve the implementation of these policies.
Growing trees outside forests (ToF) presents a significant environmental and economic opportunity in India. Nearly 80 million hectares (Mha) of these trees could sequester 3.4 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (Gt CO2e) by 2040 to help India achieve its international climate commitments. It can also support food and livelihood security for rural India, especially for its poor and vulnerable groups.
India has several enabling policies and schemes that embed a range of monetary and non-monetary incentives for scaling up ToF through interventions such as agroforestry. We analyze incentives implementation in the six states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, and Telangana to identify enabling conditions that can spur ToF expansion as well as the barriers that impede implementation.
Based on our analysis, we propose developing landscape-level restoration strategies and plans, reorienting or shifting incentives to protect, promote, and improve research on traditional ToF systems, targeting the needs of women and marginalized groups who are disproportionately dependent on multipurpose trees, and improving the enabling environment for existing incentives to motivate farmers and other practitioners to protect and expand ToF systems.
Projects
Global Restoration Initiative
Visit ProjectWRI is partnering with governments, businesses, and communities around the world to restore millions of hectares of deforested and degraded land.
Part of ForestsThe Landscape Policy Accelerator
Visit ProjectInspiring, innovating and streamlining policies to restore land for people and nature.
Part of Forest and Landscape RestorationClimate Solutions Partnership
Visit ProjectA five-year philanthropic collaboration to scale climate solutions by combining HSBC’s financial expertise with the knowledge and experience of WRI, WWF and a network of local partners
Part of BusinessFood and Land Use Coalition
Launch PlatformLaunch Platform Visit ProjectA community of organizations and individuals committed to the urgent need for food and land use transformation to create a healthier planet and healthier people.
Part of Food