Policy Coherence and Institutional Effectiveness in Advancing India’s Forest Carbon Sink Targets: An Integrated Governance and Monitoring-Reporting-Verification Assessment

Abstract

India has committed to creating an additional 2.5–3.0 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent forest carbon sinks by 2030 as part of its national climate strategy. While forest cover expansion and afforestation have received considerable attention, comparatively less research has examined whether existing governance arrangements, monitoring reporting verification (MRV) systems, and finance mechanisms are adequate to deliver verifiable and durable carbon sequestration outcomes. This study evaluates the effectiveness of India’s forest-based climate mitigation framework by integrating policy legal analysis, institutional mapping, MRV assessment, and quantitative modelling.

Using secondary data from national forest inventories, climate policy documents, and expenditure reports, the study first assesses the coherence of national forest and climate laws with international climate commitments. A TACCC-based MRV scoring rubric is then applied at the sub-national level to examine variation in monitoring capacity. Finally, a state-level panel regression combined with Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis is used to quantify how governance quality and MRV design influence realized and projected forest carbon sinks.

The results show that governance and MRV robustness explain more variation in forest carbon sequestration outcomes than forest area alone. MRV design choices are found to alter projected national carbon sink estimates by up to ±15%, independent of biophysical growth assumptions. Weak linkage between verified carbon outcomes and public finance further reduces cost efficiency and long-term carbon permanence. In contrast, performance-linked scenarios supported by credible MRV demonstrate substantially improved mitigation efficiency.

The study concludes that India’s forest carbon sink challenge is primarily institutional rather than ecological. Strengthening policy coherence, scaling integrated MRV systems, and linking finance to verified carbon outcomes are critical for achieving national mitigation targets. The governance–MRV–finance framework developed here offers transferable insights for other developing countries seeking to scale nature-based climate solutions.