Revised Green India Mission: The Shift in India’s Climate Governance

India has made strides in its combat against climate change. Most recently, it has added a record 44.5 GW of renewable energy capacity in 2025 alone, with its total capacity in this sector coming up to almost 254 GW. As per reports, India’s non-fossil energy sources thereby stand officially at more than 51%, significantly crossing the halfway mark promised to be met by 2030. Such achievements importantly assist and align with India’s other climate commitments such as creating sinks for 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon, as well as reduce emissions intensity of its GDP by 45% of its 2005 levels, both made with the objective of achieving the same by 2030.

In this regard, forests have not only been one of the most significant environmental assets that law and policy have sought to protect and improve but has been the central pillar of India’s climate governance strategy. Within this context, the National Mission for Green India, which was launched in 2014, focused primarily on forest restoration and afforestation. However, it has been the subject of criticism for lacking funding, weak carbon outcomes, social conflict, and focus on quantity rather than quality evident in large monocultures that have resulted due to alien plantations. However, the revised National Mission marks a change that is subtle, yet consequential. Shifting focus from just numbers and targets, it now shows that true efforts are centered around specific ecosystems and terrain, identifying regions such as the Aravali ranges and the western ghats as zones that require specially directed efforts. This shift reflects an underlying transition in how India perceives and adapts to climate change.

The Old Way

Prior to revision, the Mission, launched as one of eight under the National Action Plan on Climate Change aimed at enhancing tree cover, thereby increasing the capacity of carbon sequestration. In line with the old governance strategy, its focus on quantitative targets seemedlaudably ambitious, but produced varied outcomes on the ground. Afforestation and reforestation attempts were driven by political pressures, both domestic and international, and therefore prioritized speed and scale over what was truly required for the ecosystem. Soon, these efforts let to large swathes of monoculture plantations of fast-growing, alien species which caused more harm than good. Monocultures replaced naturally diverse ecosystems such as grasslands and wetlands but had both low survival rates and low long-term benefit. Trees were planted only with aggregate numbers in mind, with little heed given to the appropriateness of the measure.

This method was a centralized one, with national figures to be achieved and implemented by national and state agencies through compliance pressures and bureaucratic incentives. The importance of indigenous knowledge and practices of local communities were ignored in the pursuit of numerical targets. Afforestation thus became merely a number meeting exercise and less about restoring diminishing ecosystems. Additionally, while these targets were being met, doubts began to arise whether the other goal of the mission- carbon sequestration, was truly being realized through such plantations. Other reasons such as low funding and lack of monitoring also subjected the Mission to criticism.

The New Way

The revised Mission plan seems to address these shortcomings by recalibrating the mission’s objectives. While it retains its original goal of creating carbon sinks equivalent to 2.5-3 billion tonnes, how it seeks to do so seems to have been re-assessed and adjusted. Blind afforestation seems to have been replaced with firstly, a landscape-based or terrain-based approach and secondly, a renewed focus on ecosystem restoration.

The revised mission document states that it is adopting a ‘micro-ecosystem’ approach and seeks to direct its efforts towards ‘highly vulnerable landscapes like the Aravalli range, Western Ghats, Arid regions of Northwest India, Mangroves, Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) etc.’ The problems of implementing a standardised approach seems to also have been addressed with intervention now through ‘regionally conducive best practices’ implemented at local levels. Large monocultures will also be avoided by the planting of ‘nativemultipurpose tree species with high carbon sequestration potential’, thereby truly tying in the twin objectives of afforestation and carbon sequestration.

Further, ecosystem restoration is met by not only the focus on mixed vegetation and native species, but also a focus on land degradation, addressed through soil and water conservation efforts.The revised mission document shows how carbon sequestration has been complemented with several other goals such as biodiversity conservation, local resilience to climate change and water security, thereby being a holistic effort at ecosystem restoration. Additionally, the first component of the mission explicitly statesits focus on ‘forest quality’, while the second aims at restoration of ecosystems and third seeks to provide and protect livelihood opportunities for indigenous communities.

The Shift

The revised mission is indicative of a larger shift in India’s climate strategy. Firstly, it restores a much-needed focus on knowledge and expertise in addressing problems of climate change. The earlier method of administrative and quantitative targets seems to have been at least coupled, if not replaced with an emphasis on regionality and ecological and scientific needs. The significance of locally-grounded intervention efforts for special landscapes seems to have been recognised and the same has been complemented with other goals such as land restoration and water conservation to ensure a holistic mission plan. Ecological science, and not simple numbers has been understood to be a legitimate and required knowledge in combating climate change and drafting policies to combat it. It also takes a step against standardisation, thus establishing federalism in climate change efforts. However, this will not only require improved coordination across central and state agencies, but also require the addressal of the uneven capacities across states.

Furthermore, large-scale intervention of the manner as earlier described have been replaced by landscape-based ones, which are naturally much smaller in scale. The revised mission therefore emphasises on concentrated, specially-directed efforts at pockets of vulnerable terrain rather than adopting a large-scale standardised strategy. Spatially embedded efforts are more context-sensitive and in line with the focus on the micro-ecosystem approach.However, this means that such policies are harder to plan, implement and oversee, and will require qualitative evaluation rather than quantitative ones. Additionally, the revised mission also aligns adaptation efforts with mitigation. The focus on the restoration of ecosystems is not only to ensure maximum carbon sequestration, but also to serve as a buffer against floods and other natural disasters. This integration is reflective of a growing recognition that adaptation and mitigation efforts work best when they complement each other, rather than pursued in isolation.

Conclusion

To conclude, the Revised Mission document reflects a quiet change in India’s approach towards climate change- the move from simple afforestation targets to grounded, targeted efforts. This signifies a departure from its earlier strategy, and is indicative of a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of climate policy. The revised Mission, if implemented as envisioned(focused intervention in specific, vulnerable landscapes) has the capacity to transform forests into living pockets of climate resilience instead of being merely tokenistic carbon sinks. However, this Mission will require funding, local engagement, institutional capacity and sustained commitment- all being reasons why previously-adopted forestry efforts failed. India’s ability to maintain this move may be central to the effectiveness and reliability of its climate strategies.