What is ‘tree banking’ – and how is it helping this Indian village reach net zero?

What is ‘tree banking’ – and how is it helping this Indian village reach net zero?

Farmers in Kerala, India, face ailing businesses, with two decades of droughts and flooding decimating their yields.

But one village in the southern Indian state has launched a campaign to be carbon-neutral by 2025 - and the initiative is helping local farmers too.

The farmers are paid to plant and look after 350,000 trees in a 'tree banking' scheme.

Other areas are now following suit, developing their own net-zero programmes.



P. K. Madhavan stood proudly next to a young, sturdy mahogany tree, one of a hundred he planted three years ago on his farm in Wayanad district in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Madhavan's two acres (0.8 hectares) of land in Meenangadi village used to be lush with cash crops - coffee, black pepper and betel nut - but two decades of drought and unseasonally heavy rain have decimated his yields.

Now the mahogany plantation is one of his only reliable sources of income, earning him up to 5,000 rupees ($67) a year - and all he has to do is keep the trees standing.

The 84-year-old farmer is being paid to plant and protect trees through a "tree banking" scheme, the project at the heart of Meenangadi's campaign to