Green India Mission (GIM), under Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, is one of the eight Missions under the National Action Plan on Climate Change.
- Launched in 2014, it aims to protect, restore and enhance India’s diminishing forest cover.
- Goals:
- Expand forest/tree cover by 5 million hectares (mha) and improve quality of another 5 mha of forest and non-forest land.
- Improve livelihoods for 3 million households by increasing income from forest-based activities.
Gaps identified by CAG in GIM
- Forest Cover Shortfall (97.57%): Forest cover increased by only 0.03409 mha against 1.4 mha target.
- Lack of Convergence: GIM worked in silos with poor coordination with CAMPA, MGNREGS, Nagar Van Yojana & School Nursery Yojana.
- Loss of Funding: Institutional convergence failures led to loss of ₹10,600 crore in proposed GIM funding.
- Lack of Transparency: 14 states failed to provide prescribed public web-links for tracking GIM interventions.
- Weak Accounting Controls: 8 States/UTs did not maintain annual accounts, while accounts prepared in other cases were often unaudited or contained discrepancies with subsidiary records.
- Neglected Carbon Assessment: Only Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assessed carbon sequestration during 2015–2025.
- Poor Climate Prioritisation: Low-to-moderate vulnerability areas were selected over highly climate-vulnerable landscapes for afforestation under GIM.
- Limited Ground Impact: GIS analysis found 70% of sampled sites showed no noticeable GIM-attributable changes.
