Green India Mission

The Green India Mission, formally the National Mission for a Green India, seeks to protect, restore and expand India’s forest and tree cover while strengthening resilience to climate change. It is one of the eight missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change and combines climate mitigation, adaptation and livelihood improvement.

Forest and ecosystem restoration

The Mission treats greening as the restoration of entire ecosystems rather than merely the planting of trees.

• It aims to increase forest and tree cover over 5 million hectares and improve the quality of forest cover over another 5 million hectares.
• It seeks to restore degraded landscapes and improve ecological connectivity through a landscape-based approach.
• It aims to strengthen ecosystem services such as biodiversity conservation, water regulation, carbon storage and biomass supply.

Climate and livelihood objectives

The Mission links ecological restoration with the needs of communities living in and around forests.

• Enhanced forests act as carbon sinks while increasing the resilience of ecosystems and forest-dependent communities to climate change.
• It seeks to increase forest-based livelihood income for about 3 million households.
• It supports provisioning services such as fuelwood, fodder, small timber and non-timber forest produce.

Participatory approach

Implementation is intended to be decentralised and community-driven, with local institutions participating in planning, protection and monitoring.

• The Mission emphasises community participation because durable restoration depends on local stewardship.
• It promotes convergence with related public programmes and forest-management institutions to coordinate resources at the landscape level.