VISAKHAPATNAM: Gone are the days of only conventional income from agriculture. Nearly 500 farmers of north coastal Andhra Pradesh are now reaping the dividends of carbon credits that they earned through the environment-friendly agroforestry practices. In fact, all these are small and marginal farmers, raising these plantations on degraded lands.
Veda Climate Change Solutions Ltd., an enviro-social enterprise, is implementing a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)-registered project in Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam districts alongside three districts in Odisha.
Veda has partnered with a paper manufacturing company in Rayagada for this initiative. The World Bank is providing technical support for the project.
Veda entered into an emission reduction purchase agreement with the World Bank for this project, which started in 2004 and will continue till 2034.
The participating farmers of this innovative project received their carbon revenue from the sale of temporary certified emission reductions (tCERs) for the first time in 2012. Subsequently, the UNFCCC CDM board issued 62,756 CERs in March 2020 after second verification. For the same, the World Bank has released the carbon revenue which was distributed to the participating farmers on Tuesday in Visakhapatnam.
Speaking to TOI, Dr M Satyanarayana, a retired IFS officer and president of Veda, said that VCCSL has conceptualised a new grouped project ‘enhancing rural livelihoods through carbon sequestration by adopting agroforestry practices and nature-based solutions’ to bring 30,000 more hectares of land under agroforestry.
“This will be implemented under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) in partnership with the JK Paper Mills Ltd, Rayagada. The project is aimed at replicating and scaling up our pioneering project to benefit more resource poor farmers and to bring degraded lands to productive use. In fact, we want to replicate the initiative all over the country,” said Satyanarayana.
