Carbon farming in India: are the existing projects inclusive, additional, and permanent?

As voluntary carbon markets gain popularity, carbon farming emerges as a win-win strategy to mitigate climate change and improve farmers’ income in developing countries. India, with over 50 active carbon farming projects and an impending domestic carbon market, forms an ideal case to explore the early-stage challenges of these initiatives. Using survey data from 841 farmers from seven carbon farming project villages in Haryana and Madhya Pradesh, this study focused on socio-economic inclusion and adherence to additionality and permanence principles, which are underexplored in the existing literature. We found that carbon farmers were predominantly large-holders and from non-marginalized castes, showing patterns of systematic exclusion. Only 4% of participants were women. Around 99% of farmers had not received any monetary benefit. While certain agricultural practices predated carbon projects, raising concerns about additionality, practices like no-tillage, alternate wetting and drying, intercropping, reduced chemical fertilizers, micro-irrigation, and tree planting aligned with additionality principles. Nonetheless, a high disadoption rate (28%) raises concerns about the permanence of emissions reduction. Our findings also indicated that companies that exclusively focus on carbon credits, termed ‘Carbon Core’ companies in this study, were more efficient in spreading regenerative agricultural practices than subsidiaries or offshoots of larger corporations whose primary businesses are unrelated to carbon credits.Promote Inclusivity: Policies should use differential pricing to incentivize the inclusion of small farmers and marginalized caste groups in carbon farming projects. Projects that are socially more inclusive should receive higher prices.Enhance Communication and Training: Mandate effective communication and regular training from project developers to improve the adoption and continuity of regenerative farming practices.Address Financial Barriers: Develop mechanisms to ensure timely payments to farmers, thereby reducing disadoption due to economic constraints.Collaborate with Institutions: Encourage collaboration with national and international research centres to design projects that avoid yield penalties.Improve Monitoring: Implement robust frameworks to ensure projects adhere to additionality and permanence principles, enhancing their credibility and effectiveness.