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In Rajasthan, invasive tree helps tech giants buy carbon credits
Decades ago, in the Banni grasslands of Kachchh, an invasive tree was planted to solve one environmental crisis. Today, big companies are paying to convert the same trees into a charcoal-like substance to solve another problem.
In January 2025, Google announced one of the largest biochar carbon removal deals to date, agreeing to purchase 1,00,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide removal credits from Varaha ClimateAg Private Limited, a Gurugram-based climate tech startup. Biochar is a carbon-rich charcoal produced by heating organic matter in low-oxygen conditions, which can store carbon in soil for hundreds of years.
By January 2026, Varaha had added Microsoft to its roster of corporate buyers, with Lufthansa, Swiss Re, and Capgemini also signing offtake agreements.
Among Varaha’s initiatives is a project in Kachchh, Gujarat, combining carbon sequestration with ecosystem restoration.
Prosopis juliflora was introduced to Kachchh around the 1960s to arrest desertification. The Banni grassland now has around 50% of its area dominated by this single invasive species, according to Khyati Thacker, a botanist who has spent over five years working on community-led ecosystem restoration in Kachchh and Saurashtra.
Research shows the grassland produced up to 4,000 kg of fodder per hectare in the 1960s; by 1999, that had fallen to around 620 kg. “This Prosopis juliflora has destroyed the jungle, the native trees (such as Vachellia nilotica, Prosopis cineraria, Senegalia senegal) and the grazing grass,” said Kaiyan Rabari, a herdsman from Sangnara village, Kachchh.
Around late 2022, a private project developer approached Sahjeevan, an NGO working in Kachchh, with a proposal to link the restoration work to the carbon market.
A pilot was launched in Dedhiya village, Kachchh, using low-cost Kon-Tiki kilns, cone-shaped metal structures in which Prosopis wood is burned under low-oxygen conditions and then doused with water to produce biochar. “All this was speculation,” said Kavita Mehta, Executive Director of Sahjeevan. “They weren’t sure either, and we weren’t sure either, so it was a pilot for both of us.”
Based on Sahjeevan’s 2023-24 annual report, the Kachchh pilot processed around 800 tonnes of Prosopis, generating approximately 2,000 carbon credits sold on the European voluntary market at roughly $120 per credit.
The climate logic of a biochar carbon credit rests on one central premise: that the biochar produced ends up durably buried in soil, storing carbon for centuries. But on the ground in Kachchh, soil application is not being tracked with the same rigour as production itself.
In Sangnara village, farmer Umra Pala Jepar, 48, described a stockpile left behind after production. “The biochar has been lying in the open at the outskirts of the village since it was all made. Two years have passed, and it is lying just like that.”
In a written response to questions submitted by Mongabay-India on May 28, Varaha said, “In none of our projects does biochar leave the production site before it is mixed with cow dung or manure. Furthermore, Varaha’s systems are designed so that unmixed biochar cannot be submitted to the registry for credits.”
Sahjeevan, in its 2024-25 annual report, noted that in the same Sangnara village, the local Biodiversity Management Committees cleared Prosopis from 30 hectares, converted it into 100 tonnes of biochar, and generated 220 carbon credits.
Gafur Mutva, a contractor in Gorewali village, Kachchh, who produced biochar in Banni, explained the structural difficulty of soil application in the grassland context. “We produce biochar, but there is no agriculture here in this specific area to apply it to. If we transport it outside Banni, the logistics cost increases. That is why we dig a pit there and apply it directly into the soil.” He flagged an unintended consequence, “The biochar retains soil moisture, but we noticed that instead of helping native grasses, that moisture appeared to be benefiting the invasive Prosopis juliflora. Double the baval grows instead of native grass,” he said.
Shailesh Vyas, an agriculture expert who conducted biochar soil trials across multiple locations in Kachchh as an assessment for Sahjeevan, found the results troubling. “We experimented in the arid and semi-arid landscapes of Kachchh. The results were entirely negative. The crop production actually dropped across all biochar plots compared to the control plots.”
His explanation is rooted in soil chemistry, “Whenever you burn wood, the resulting product is largely alkaline. The soil in Kachchh is already naturally alkaline. When you introduce an alkaline additive to an already alkaline environment, it does not reduce the pH (a scale that tells us how acidic or alkaline soil is); it increases it,” Vyas said.
In response to Mongabay-India’s queries, Varaha said biochar is mixed with cow dung in a 1:1 ratio, saving farmers the cost of inputs such as urea and DAP. Vyas raised a fundamental methodological point, “Cow dung is globally recognised as one of the best soil inputs. If you apply one tonne of biochar with one tonne of cow dung, any benefit you see is highly likely coming from the cow dung itself, not the biochar.”
Producing biochar in a Kon-Tiki kiln requires water to quench the burning biomass. Thacker’s field data put the requirement at 500 to 600 litres per kiln. “Kachchh is an arid landscape facing severe water scarcity, where people struggle for drinking water. You are providing funding to do something good, but in the process of doing that good deed, no one has considered how many other vital resources are being wasted,” she said.
Mutva, who ran up to 20 kilns simultaneously, said around 12,000 litres were needed each day, trucked from Khavda or Bhuj since saline water corrodes kilns. “The entire Banni population, along with thousands of pastoralist livestock per village, relies primarily on one Narmada pipeline. The water crisis here is severe.”
Varaha said approximately 500 litres are required per kiln cycle and that it recycles quench water by digging a trench beside each kiln. Mutva found this unworkable. “These theoretical solutions simply do not work on the ground. We made a genuine attempt to recover and save the water. However, at best, we might recover a very small portion from certain batches, which we can then reuse for the next cycle. Beyond that, the overall water consumption in this process is high.” He added, “The kilns are constantly relocated to wherever the raw wood supply is. The labourers handling the heavy wood simply will not take on the additional headache of managing water pipelines.”
The other concern is regrowth. “Babul (P juliflora) grows back to its original state in just two years,” said Babubhai Ravabhai Lalwani, a contractor in Khanpar village, Kachchh. Mutva was more direct, “We destroyed the baval, clearing everything with a JCB. But it still comes back, and it comes back denser. Within a month, this Prosopis juliflora can grow nearly a metre.”
Thackar warned of a structural drift in the model’s purpose. “Rather than restoration, this may become a business model where, once removal is done, you wait three to four years for the Prosopis juliflora to grow back, and then you utilise the biomass again from the same landscape. This would benefit neither the native ecosystem nor the local community,” she said.
In Banni, Prosopis removed from degraded grazing lands when the first Kon-Tiki pilot began in 2022 had, by 2025, reinvaded the same areas, with growth nearly doubling, according to Thacker. “A similar pattern played out in Sangnara, where Prosopis was cleared from around 11 hectares in 2024. Within a year, the number of new recruits had nearly doubled. Villagers said that while funds are being allocated for biochar production and the removal of mature trees, there is no financial support for clearing the new recruits that rapidly regenerate,” Thacker said. “Without that, biochar production alone cannot restore the grasslands. For this reason, many of them were not in favour of biochar production.”
Varaha acknowledged that “significant restoration following Prosopis juliflora removal at a particular site would take at least three to five years of continuous effort.” Mutva said the economics of thorough removal were unworkable. “The compensation rate from the company is also low, so it is difficult to justify the expense of uprooting it every single time,” he said. He received Rs 7 to Rs 8 per kg of biochar; processing one metric tonne of raw biomass yielded only around 200 kg. Mehta confirmed that community institutions were paid Rs 7.2 per kg.
Communities may not know the price at which their credits are sold. “Are we transparently sharing with them at what price their carbon credit will be sold? All these are matters of transparency. With the community, it is necessary because it is their right,” Mehta said.
Varaha said it discloses credit sale prices and revenue breakdowns to communities, signs Free, Prior and Informed Consent agreements with participating communities and village panchayats before production begins, and makes all payments to communities in advance, before credits are issued. Asked for specific figures on how revenue is divided, including its own margin, the company did not provide them.
Mehta flagged issues related to auditing. “The auditor is paid by the same company whose project is being verified, creating a built-in conflict of interest,” Mehta argued. A July 2025 paper by the University of Pennsylvania concluded that the voluntary carbon market’s auditing process is inherently flawed, pointing to the financial relationship between project developers and verifying bodies as compromising genuine independence.
Varaha said its projects are validated annually by a Validation and Verification Body independently appointed by the registry, with unannounced site visits as part of the process. “The audit covers the entire chain, from biomass sourcing through to biochar application,” the company said.
Google has backed biochar as a carbon removal solution because of what it describes as its “ability to scale worldwide.” Even as it invests in such carbon removal projects, however, the company’s greenhouse gas emissions increased by 81% between 2019 and 2025. Mongabay-India contacted Google for comment and will update this story if a response is received.
Carbon Market Watch, a non-profit watchdog, argues that this reflects a broader problem with carbon offsetting. “Offsetting is a highly problematic practice because it diverts the focus away from the real emissions reductions that must be urgently achieved, provides ample opportunity for greenwashing and usually does not represent the claimed climate impact,” it said.
“The systems being normalised today will shape how carbon markets function in India,” Mehta said. In Banni, where the monsoon is underway, gando baval is already sending up fresh shoots through land cleared just two years ago.
This article was first published on Mongabay.
This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.
Source: Scroll
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