Common Practice Standards must consider India.

• Agroforestry in India could expand from 28.4 million hectares to 53 million hectares by 2050, contributing 19.3% of India’s carbon stocks.
• If policies, financial support, and incentives are implemented, the sector could contribute an additional carbon sink of over 2.5 billion tons of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

‘Common Practice’ in Carbon Standards
• “Common practice” is a key criterion used to assess if a project is additional, meaning it goes beyond what is typically done in a given region.
• Current global carbon standards often reflect large-scale agricultural practices found in regions like Latin America, Africa, or the United States, where landholdings are extensive and contiguous.
• In India, 86.1% of Indian farmers are small and marginal, with landholdings of less than two hectares.
• These farmers often engage in agroforestry in a non-systematic, scattered manner, which may not meet the additionality criteria set by current carbon standards.

Need for India-centric Approaches
• An urgent need to redefine and consider the common practice criterion to better reflect the specific challenges and opportunities within the Indian agroforestry sector.
• Revision of the common practice standards to accommodate the fragmented, small-holder model prevalent in India would unlock the vast potential for carbon sequestration.
• Agroforestry when integrated with ARR initiatives offers a viable solution to the various challenges faced by India’s agricultural sector.
• Participation in ARR projects presents a pathway to income diversification and delivers crucial environmental benefits, such as enhancing soil fertility, improving water retention, and mitigating erosion.

Help for Small and Marginal Farmers
• International carbon finance platforms should revise their standards to better align with the realities of Indian agriculture.
• Revising the “Common Practice” guidelines to be more inclusive of Indian agroforestry practices would enable millions of small and marginal farmers to participate in ARR projects.