Executive summary

India has an established track record in the voluntary carbon market, including blue carbon. The country hosts eight mangrove projects registered under Verra, alongside more than 150 other nature-based carbon projects across forestry, peat, and agriculture, mainly under Verra and one under Plan Vivo. This demonstrates technical experience, market familiarity, and developer interest, and confirms that India is already an active jurisdiction for voluntary nature-based carbon finance, including mangroves.

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India imposes no carbon-market–specific requirements on nature-based projects that trade solely on the international VCM. These projects do not need national authorization, registry registration, or government MRV. In practice, however, mangrove projects must comply with multiple environmental, coastal, forest, and wildlife approval processes, often involving several authorities and discretionary decisions. India also does not mandate benefit-sharing agreements, and there is no clear legal framework for the distribution of carbon revenues. While consultation and consent are required in certain contexts under laws such as the Forest Rights Act, carbon benefit sharing remains largely unregulated.
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Land tenure and carbon rights are major sources of risk. The State controls most mangroves, with limited private or collective ownership. Private or community management of state mangroves is possible only through government-approved, case-by-case agreements with no standardized tenure or carbon rights. Even where communities or private owners hold land rights, strict coastal and forest protections apply. India lacks a clear legal definition of carbon rights, leaving carbon ownership and revenue allocation to project-level contracts rather than to national law.

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Overall, India has ambiguous enabling conditions for blue carbon projects: it offers proven market participation and flexibility for projects targeting the international VCM, but these are combined with fragmented regulatory oversight, limited guidance on benefit sharing, and unclear carbon rights. For project developers and investors, this means that blue carbon projects are legally possible and commercially viable, but require careful site-level due diligence, early engagement with multiple authorities, and robust contractual arrangements to secure tenure, approvals, community participation, and carbon rights. For policymakers, the current framework highlights opportunities to reduce uncertainty and attract high-integrity investment by clarifying carbon rights, standardizing benefit-sharing expectations, and improving coordination across forest, coastal, and carbon governance systems.