Carbon is acquiring a new role in global commerce. With the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) now in its definitive phase, the carbon embedded in products is becoming a cost factor in international trade. Britain is preparing its own carbon border mechanism from January 2027. For Indian exporters, emissions are increasingly entering the competitive equation alongside energy, logistics and tariffs.
That creates an unusual business question: could India’s natural capital become part of the carbon economy? Environmental strategist B.N. Kumar, director, NatConnect Foundation, believes that Mumbai and Maharashtra could provide a test bed. His Green-Blue Carbon Coalition concept seeks to bring together green carbon from bamboo and blue carbon from mangroves and wetlands and explore whether their carbon-storage and sequestration potential can be scientifically assessed, aggregated and eventually monetised.
In effect, Maharashtra could be sitting on a hidden carbon-credit bank. The idea has already entered the policy process. Kumar took the proposal to the Prime Minister’s Office and the Union ministry for environment, forest & climate change. The ministry appreciated the concept and referred it to the state environment department, Maharashtra, for consideration and an action-taken report.
The proposition has also received support from Pasha Patel, executive chairman, Chief Minister’s Environment Sustainable Development Task Force, who has taken it up with CM Devendra Fadnavis. Patel has described the carbon potential of bamboo, mangroves and wetlands as a ‘hidden cash box’ and has backed the exploration of a Carbon Bank or Exchange that could certify, aggregate and trade eligible credits.
The timing is important. India is building its own carbon-market architecture through the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme, while exporters face increasingly carbon-conscious overseas markets. The UK has recognised India’s CCTS among qualifying carbon-pricing schemes under its proposed border mechanism, subject to its rules.
The Green-Blue Carbon proposition adds a different dimension: rather than looking only at industrial emissions, it asks whether India can create a credible supply of nature-based carbon assets.
Storing carbon
Bamboo is central to that proposition. Beyond its traditional uses, it is emerging as a renewable industrial resource for construction, biomass, paper and other applications. Its cultivation could potentially combine rural income with carbon value. Mangroves and wetlands bring another dimension, storing carbon while providing coastal protection, flood buffering and other ecosystem services.
Sachhin Patra, a climate and sustainability professional with expertise in carbon markets, sees the possibility of creating a new asset class. “Can a city’s wetlands be run as an asset class that pays for its own survival?” he asks, adding: “Coastal wetlands store carbon at rates per hectare that far exceed most terrestrial forests, so the underlying science is on our side”.
The concept is not about automatically converting every bamboo plantation or wetland into a carbon credit. That would run into the very problems that have made integrity such a critical issue in nature-based carbon markets: credible baselines, additionality, permanence, monitoring, verification and avoidance of double counting.
The trigger was an unusual valuation of the 12-hectare DPS Flamingo Lake in Navi Mumbai. The City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra assigned the wetland a market value of about Rs3,600 crore. Kumar’s question was whether its ecological value could also be quantified – including carbon storage, flood mitigation and climate resilience.
If the numbers work, a new business ecosystem could emerge around them. Remote-sensing companies could map assets, carbon specialists could establish baselines, independent agencies could verify credits, technology firms could track them, while banks and investors could explore financing structures.
The next opportunity to put the idea before a wider business and policy audience comes at the Bamboo Economy and Sustainability Summit in Mumbai on 27 September. The summit is expected to bring together Chief Minister Fadnavis, ministers, government officials, investors, industry representatives and bamboo experts, providing Patel and Kumar a platform to take the Green-Blue Carbon proposition beyond environmental circles and into the wider economic conversation.