The state, which has the thickest green cover in north India, is studying a scheme in Costa Rica that has so far entitled more than 4,400 farmers to payment and has also revived the South American country's degraded rainforests by 67 per cent.
Besides offering incentives for tree growing, the Himachal government also wants to use this scheme to devise a fiscal formula, which it can present to the Centre, to buttress its oft-repeated claim for Rs 100 crore annual compensation for forest conservation.
State's environment minister J P Nadda told Business Standard that experts have finalised an adapted version of the scheme that would be presented to the Union cabinet in June.
He claimed that the main aim of the scheme was to present a fiscal formula to the Centre for compensating states like Himachal Pradesh for its greenery.
Giving a clue to what the scheme may hold, Nadda said, "The funds for paying to states like Himachal could be raised through an ecological tax, as in the case of Costa Rica.''
Also Read
He said the tax could be imposed on the "north Indian states that get clean water, air and are saved from floods because Himachal has opted not to cut forests".
Himachal has banned felling of trees since 1984 and it has preserved its forest cover at 12.9 per cent. The state contends that it needs to be paid for its forests, which contribute to clean water, air and prevention of floods in north India while locking up its land.
However, while the Centre had dismissed this for lack of precedent, the Planning Commission had allocated a measly Rs 20 crore for the Tenth Plan to the state.
Desperate to get out of this logjam, the Dhumal government had last month deputed a team of official to the South American country that has successfully revived its depleted rain forest cover through Pagos de Servicios Ambientales (known as PSA in Spanish), or Payments for environmental services launched in 1990.
The Costa Rican government levies an ecotax (3.5 per cent) on its citizens that goes towards making payments to more than 4,400 farmers and forest owners for reforestation, forest conservation, and sustainable forest management activities. As a result Costa Rica's green cover has risen to 67 per cent and the country has targets of becoming a carbon neutral - meaning non-pollutant country by 2021. Once left with highly degraded forests, Costa Rica today is ranked at fifth in the global environmental performance index.
Hinting that such a scheme was on the anvil, Chief Minister P K Dhumal recently said that a "new concept is coming to the forefront the world over, where the beneficiary of the environmental commodities and services have to pay for their use".
However, according to a bureaucrat who went to Costa Rica, the economic conditions in India and Latin American country are poles apart. "The smallest land holdings in Costa Rica are about 50 hectares, while in our case, land holdings are 0.05 hectares.''
Himachal, like Brazil, cannot seek carbon credits for its existing forests under the international regime for climate change mitigation.