NEW DELHI: At the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) CoP 17 held in Mongolia, India highlighted the necessity for diversified, adequate, predictable, and sustained international financing for land restoration and drought resilience.
Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, emphasised India’s innovative and diversified financing architecture for these initiatives during the Ministerial Dialogue on “Innovative Financial Mechanisms for Healthy Land and Drought Resilience” at the 17th Conference.
Yadav also met with Bangladesh's Environment Minister to discuss cross-boundary environmental issues. Stressing the importance of sustained investment in land restoration, Yadav stated, “Land restoration is not a cost but an investment in food, water, biodiversity, livelihoods, and long-term resilience.”
He pointed out that effectively addressing desertification, land degradation, and drought on a large scale requires diversified, predictable, and sustained sources of finance beyond public budgets, alongside stronger public-private partnerships.
Yadav showcased India’s blended green finance framework, which supports financing for climate change adaptation, sustainable land use, forestry and agriculture, afforestation, and biodiversity conservation.
He also mentioned Sovereign Green Bonds as a means to mobilise capital for land restoration, drought resilience, sustainable forestry, and other environmental priorities. Additionally, he highlighted India’s Green Credit Programme, which allows public and private entities to finance the restoration of degraded forest land.
Credits are issued after five years of successful restoration, upon achieving at least 40% canopy density, and can be used once for compensatory afforestation or statutory planting obligations. Yadav also discussed India’s compensatory conservation regime, which directs payments received for forest diversion towards compensatory afforestation and ecosystem restoration, integrating corporate funding into environmental regulatory processes.
“Finance must be continuous, verifiable, and connected to local communities,” Yadav said, while emphasising that India’s experience demonstrates what committed domestic resources can achieve.
However, he stressed that these efforts cannot substitute for additional, adequate, and predictable international financing for restoration and drought resilience. On the sidelines of the event, Yadav met with his Bangladeshi counterpart.
Their discussions focused on key issues such as mangrove conservation, land erosion, and the transboundary monitoring of Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans. In a social media post on the platform X (formerly Twitter),
Yadav shared a photo with Abdul Awal Mintoo, the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of Bangladesh. He highlighted their discussions on biodiversity issues shared by both neighbouring countries.
“Our discussions focused on mangrove conservation, land erosion, and the transboundary monitoring of Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans. We also reviewed the existing memorandums of understanding (MoUs) between India and Bangladesh related to greening initiatives and explored effective ways to implement them going forward,” Yadav wrote on X.