India National CAMPA — Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority

India's Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Act, enacted by Parliament in 2016 (operative from 2018), formally established the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (National CAMPA) and 36 State CAMPAs. The mechanism operationalises a Supreme Court directive first issued in 2002: any agency diverting forest land for non-forest purposes—roads, mines, reservoirs, industry—must deposit a compensatory afforestation charge into the relevant State CAMPA, which uses funds for new plantation establishment or degraded-forest improvement.

Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, National CAMPA approved Rs 38,516 crore (approximately US$4.6 billion) for state annual plans. States released Rs 29,311 crore to forest departments, of which Rs 26,001 crore (67.5%) was utilised. In the same period, India planted 178,261 ha of compensatory afforestation against a target of 209,297 ha—85% achievement. Gujarat, Chandigarh, Mizoram, and Madhya Pradesh (21,747 ha planted) achieved 100% of their targets.

A Supreme Court-mandated Central Empowered Committee (CEC) report (2024) identified significant weaknesses: plantation survival rates vary from 40 to 90% across states; monoculture plantations risk reducing biodiversity and disrupting ecological corridors; delayed fund release hampers implementation; and ecological monitoring remains inconsistent. As of 2023-24, the accumulated CAMPA corpus stands at approximately Rs 54,685 crore, much still unspent.

CAMPA represents India's national mandatory biodiversity offset mechanism, conceptually similar to Germany's Ökokonto or England's Biodiversity Net Gain but at subcontinental scale. Independent ecologists and the CEC have recommended transitioning to mixed native-species plantations and strengthening outcome monitoring. The PARIVESH digital portal provides centralised tracking of approvals and fund releases.

Read the full analysis: https://campa.gov.in