FutureEarth - Protecting the Environment
Pledge by
Indus Towers Limited
Protection of the earth’s natural habitat, with a commitment to grow 1 Mn trees by 2027 and to create a sizeable carbon sink for India, with a focus on enabling communities

- Type
- Conserving, Restoring & Growing, Enabling
- This pledge will take place from
- 2024 to beyond 2030
- Location
- India
Pledge overview
With our core belief of protecting the environment and being a socially responsible organisation, Indus Towers is committed to contributing to the global effort of conserving, restoring, and growing 1 trillion trees by 2030, as part of the 1t.org initiative.
Through our FutureEarth program, we pledge to plant and ensure the survival of 1 million trees across India by 2027. We commit to restoring and reserving loss of biodiversity and reducing soil erosion to build a greener planet and contribute to climate change mitigation. We recognize and realize that forests play a crucial role in our ecosystem by sequestering carbon, regulating global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharging groundwater, preventing soil erosion and avoiding floods by acting as barriers. They are home to major part of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, provide habitats for numerous species, and support livelihoods for millions of people.
This initiative focuses on semi-urban and rural areas across India, engaging local communities with a higher emphasis on women farmers to improve livelihood and promote financial inclusion. In FY 24-25, we aim to plant 250,000 trees, including capacity building and training for more than 3,000 farmers and create positive impacts on the community and environment.
'FutureEarth' programme aims to contribute to the following SDGs: Climate Action, Life on Land, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Sustainable Cities and Communities, Partnership for the Goals.
Our objective is to create a larger impact by building partnerships with the government, communities and other like-minded corporates. Through capacity building, training and expansion of avenues for income generation, FutureEarth aims to build deep community connections and also ensure that our efforts are culturally sensitive, community-driven and sustainable.
Our pledge aligns with our Sustainability goals and supports India's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to create a carbon sink of 2.5 to 3.0 billion tons of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover.
Actions in this pledge
-
Conserving trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Conservation support activities
- Support the operating costs and activities of existing conservation areas, including advocacy for conservation policy
- Other conservation activities
- Water conservation
Additional details
The conservation activities will be planned for 3 years and the monitoring mechanism will include:
• Mapping of the lands by polygon mapping and geotagging
• Photo documentation of the activities
• Monitoring the survival of trees
• Training modules on conservation of forests for communities
• Economic benefit mapping for native peopleConserving
-
Restoring and growing trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Assisted natural regeneration
- Actions that support natural regeneration without tree planting, such as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, forest soil remediation, exotic species control, disease prevention, and wildfire protection
- Reforestation
- Re-establishment of forest through planting and/or deliberate seeding on land classified as forest, that has been degraded or where trees are unlikely to regenerate naturally
- Agroforestry
- Activities that establish and manage the integration of trees into agricultural landscapes, silvopastoral systems, farming in forests and along forest margins and tree-crop production
- Mangrove restoration
- Establishment or enhancement of mangroves along coastal areas and in estuaries
Additional details
2024-2025: Identification of sites and selection of suitable trees (e.g., fruit bearing and timber trees) based on geography. Initial planting phase and training programs. Aim to plant 250,000 trees in 2024-25.
2026: Expansion of the program in more geographies within India to create a positive impact for the communities and create a sizeable carbon sink for the country. Also review and assessment of tree survival rates and community impact of the planted trees via different internal audits & audit by implementation partners.
2027: Based on the outcome of the program, expand the program to achieve the goal of 1 Mn trees and ensure comprehensive impact evaluation.
Subject to modification based on needs analysis.Monitoring Mechanism:
• Mapping of the lands by polygon mapping and geotagging
• Photo documentation of the activities
• Monitoring the survival of trees
• Training modules on conservation and survival of trees for communities
• Economic benefit mapping for native people with a focus on womenRestoring & Growing
- Trees
- 1,000,000
-
Enabling activities for trees and forest landscapes
Supporting actions
- Nursery and seedling development
- Establish tree nurseries, including actions such as identification and collection of seeds and/or growing seedlings
- Sustainable forest management
- Activities that support the stewardship and use of forests (including by local communities and indigenous peoples), to maintain their biological diversity, productivity, and regeneration capacity, as well as their potential to fulfil relevant ecological economic and social functions
- Education and capacity building
- Forest / tree species conservation and restoration education programmes, targeted educational and behaviour change campaigns, training and capacity building, including promotion of local and traditional knowledge and practices
- Community mobilisation
- Community mobilisation and engagement activities for conservation, restoration and reforestation, including enabling systems of community governance, etc.
- Youth engagement
- Engagement of young people and/or youth networks to catalyse a restoration generation
- Data collection, management and technological tools
- Activities that provide data and/or technological tools to support conservation and restoration (e.g. monitoring etc.)
Additional details
The plantation activities will be initiated in FY 24-25 and will be monitored for minimum of 4 years. The agroforestry project will have a monitoring and evaluation framework that shall cover the following:
• Mapping of the farms by polygon mapping and geotagging
• Photo documentation of the project activities
• Internal audits to monitor the survivability of saplings, and the process of the project flow Support by Agricultural and/or forestry experts at regular interval
Subject to modification based on needs analysis.We would work with implementation partners to build technological tools for data monitoring to support conservation, restoration & survival of trees/ forests.
Enabling
Our ecologically and socially responsible approach
We are selecting climate-resilient, diverse tree species for safeguarding biodiversity by avoiding invasive species i.e., using indigenous species. Our efforts are directed towards ensuring restoration and reserving loss of biodiversity, and reducing soil erosion to build a greener planet and contribute to climate change mitigation. Stringent methods will be implemented to monitor the progress of the commitment and will be revisited quarterly.
The commitment will also focus on creating strong community understanding of conducive practices, contributing to the circular economy, along with promoting equity, and creating economic opportunities, especially for women farmers, through fruit and timber tree planting. We will provide trainings and help in capacity building for long term association, to foster financial inclusion and better livelihood.
We are aligning our protocols and implementation practices with the Guiding Principles of Forest Landscape Restoration and other internal protocols.
Our system of accreditation
The implementing partners are and will be (for future too) validated by an external CSR management partner.
Our partners
Current partners: Say Trees Environment Trust and Sustainable Green Initiative Foundation
Our locations
We are working at locations across India.
For the year FY24-25, we are planning to plant 250,000 trees, including Capacity Building & Trainings for ~ 3000 farmers), in 5 states including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand, based on the natural geography of the place. Varities: Karaunda, Mango, Moringa, Malta, Guava, Jackfruit, Apricot, Cashew, Mulberry, Walnut, Plum, Amla (Indian gooseberry), Custard Apple, Papaya, amongst others.