Budget 2023 Needs to Support Restoration Entrepreneurs

  Kavita Sharma , Senior Program Manager - Land Accelerator

India has a huge opportunity to fulfil its international and domestic climate commitments through landscape restoration, which is currently being accelerated in the country by ‘restoration entrepreneurs’. These entrepreneurs, who are running unique land restoration-based businesses, are not just improving land productivity, but also spearheading climate action along with local communities. 

We hope that Union Budget 2023 channelizes support for these restoration entrepreneurs through targeted schemes providing capital incentives in form of grants or debt instruments like flexible loans, which are most suitable for early-stage restoration businesses with long gestation period such as agroforestry-based or food-forest models.

Secondly, recognizing such businesses as a distinct category in India’s emerging startup sector can ensure a better market positioning for these entrepreneurs, and help them attract more investors and secure funding for their impact-driven businesses. Dedicated government support can play a pivotal role in unlocking the tremendous potential which resides in Tier II and III cities as well as rural geographies and boosting entrepreneurship in the space of restoration. 

Third, the government must also look at establishing an institutional support for land restoration entrepreneurs.  Annual conclaves or exhibitions to promote their solutions on lines of the agriculture exhibitions/conclaves at national level will provide a much-needed boost to these changemakers.

Further, announcing convergence of available funds for implementing land restoration-based activities by both non-profit organizations and for-profit enterprises can accelerate land restoration at scale. Currently more than 100 million hectares of India’s total land offers opportunity for forest protection and landscape restoration which can not only sequester 3 to 4.3 giga tons of above-ground carbon by 2040, but also generate sustainable livelihoods and better incomes and improve food and nutrition security for people. Provisioning a focused support for land restoration entrepreneurs can help us unlock this opportunity faster at scale.