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Sustainable Development and Climate Change 213

6.15 The National Mission for a Green India (GIM) was introduced with the aim to protect,
restore and enhance India’s forest cover. It takes a holistic view on greening and focuses
on multiple ecosystem services along with carbon sequestration and emission reduction
as co-benefits. The mission was started with the objective to increase forest/tree cover on
5 million hectares (m ha) of forest/non-forest land and improve quality of forest cover on
another 5 m ha land area. The mission also targeted improvement of ecosystem services
including biodiversity, hydrological services and carbon sequestration. The mission’s
interventions were started in the year 2015-16 with the collaborative effort of Central
and State Governments. The various afforestation activities including tree plantation were
taken up over 8.49 m ha area from 2015-16 to 2019-20 under the various schemes of the
Central Government inclusive of 1.42 lakh ha under this mission, state plan schemes and
also plantation taken up by the NGOs, civil societies and corporate houses as reported
under the Twenty Point Program. Figure 5 below depicts the afforestation target and its
achievement.

Figure 5: The afforestation target and its achievement under various
schemes including Green India Mission.

Source: Directorate of Green India Mission

6.16 Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) a Central Sector Scheme, was approved in January
2014 to build and support the scientific and analytical capacity for assessment of climate
change in the country, establish appropriate institutional framework and implement climate
actions at a total cost of ` 290 crores for a duration of five years. Two important components
of the CCAP scheme are the National Carbonaceous Aerosols Program (NCAP) and the
Long-Term Ecological Observatories (LTEO). NCAP is a multi-institutional program being
implemented by a consortium of 17 institutions led by IIT Bombay. It was inaugurated in
the year 2017-18 and is a five-year duration project. LTEO is another project under the CCAP
scheme for duration of 5 years and was started in the year 2019-2020. The duration of CCAP
was initially from 2017-18 to 2019-20 and this was later on extended till 2020-21 with a
budget outlay of ` 218.43 crore.
6.17 In addition to the above, National Adaptation Fund on Climate Change (NAFCC) a Central
Sector Scheme with National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) as the
National Implementing Entity was operationalized in 2015-16, with a budget allocation of ` 350