The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Bonn, Germany, has registered a clean development management (CDM) project titled “The small scale cooperative afforestation CDM pilot project activity on private lands affected by shifting sand dunes in Sirsa district of Haryana”.
An official spokesman said the project proposal consisted of afforesting privately owned land situated in eight villages of Sirsa district. The total target area was 370 hectares, which was owned by 227 farmers.
“The farmers have voluntarily agreed to the conditions of the project proposal and had got the plantation carried out in 300 hectares during 2008-09 and the rest of the target land would be afforested during 2009-10,” he added.
Though the land that had been taken up as target was very small, it opens up prospective possibility of future projects that could come up as follow up to pioneering projects. All 227 farmers would continue to receive the benefits by harvesting short rotation tree species at the end of 10 years and long rotation tree species at the end of 20 years.
He said the CDM pilot project preparation went through a highly rigorous exercise of mobilisation of public opinion leading to the constitution and registration of farmers’ society, namely Haryana CDM Variksh Kisan Samiti, Ellenabad, Sirsa, and ground field surveys by the Haryana Community Forestry Projects of Haryana Forest Department.
“During the first phase, a project concept note (PNC) was prepared and got approved by the national designated authority,” he said. After this, another document called as project designed document (PDD) was prepared by incorporating basic field information and project concepts. In the third phase, the pilot project was got validated by subjecting the PDD through an international validating expert. During the fourth phase, the project was published on the website of UNFCCC for scrutiny and possible objections on the project.
After lapsing the designed period, now the UNFCCC had registered the pilot project as fit for carbon trading under the clean development mechanism.
The multistage preparation of PCN and PDD, approval by national designated authority, validation, publication on website and registration involved intricate technicalities and about Rs 2 million were spent during a period of two years by the European Union-Aided Haryana Community Forestry Project, the spokesman added.
