The Green India Mission (GIM) is an ambitious climate-action commitment by India to moderate climate change impact through protection of existing forests and restoration of lost forests through tree plantation. Yet, the latest findings of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) exposing the wide gap between GIM’s stated objectives and on-the-ground execution across states are a stark warning that the opportunity for effective climate-change mitigation is slipping away. The CAG findings reveal that the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in 2014 approved GIM for the 12th Plan period (2012-13 to 2016-17) and one year of spill-over to the 13th Plan, i.e., up to 2017-18, at a total cost of Rs. 13,000 crores, which included Rs. 10,600 crores through convergence with schemes like the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management Planning authority (CAMPA) for Rs. 6,000 crore, the MG National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for Rs. 4,000 crore and the National Afforestation Programme for Rs. 600 crore. The audit observation that the convergence of activities of GIM with other afforestation schemes could not be achieved and the proposed funding support could not be attained lays bare the harsh reality of the wide gap between the intent of the mission and execution on the ground due to lack of coordination among the government authorities and agencies. This resulted in limited budgetary support for the Mission as all the funding for GIM flowed from limited annual budgets of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). “The shortage of budgetary funds combined with unsuccessful attempts at convergence crippled the implementation of the Scheme and adversely impacted the achievement of targets set under the perspective plans,” the report adds. Ironically, the MoEF&CC insistence in its reply to CAG that there was never any provision of roping in of funds from other schemes for GIM implementation and that the convergence is stipulated in terms of the activities with their achievements collating at the national level and not in terms of any financial resources from any schemes contradicts the CCEA’s conditional approval to the Mission linking its funding support to mobilisation of funds through convergence with other schemes. A key finding highlighted in the report that exposes how the non-availability of required funds stemmed from the Mission hopes is that MoEF&CC could provide only 15.15 per cent of funds against the Centre’s share projected under Perspective Plans till March, whereas the states could provide only 14.12 per cent of the total projected share as their matching share. The board objectives of the GIM include increasing forest/tree cover to the extent of five million hectares (mha) and improving the quality of forest/tree cover of another five mha of forest/non-forest lands; improving ecosystem services, including biodiversity, hydrological services and carbon sequestration, as a result of treatment of 10 mha of forest land/non-forest land; increasing forest-based livelihood income of about three million households living in and around forests; and enhancing carbon dioxide sequestration by 50 to 60 million tonnes by the year 2020. Achieving these objectives is pivotal to offset the forest cover loss caused by massive tree felling for connectivity and infrastructure projects over the past decades, and any shortcomings in GIM implementation will only deepen the country’s ecological deficit. The CAG pointed out that the institutional structure under GIM at various levels was guided by three core principles—strengthening of institutions for decentralised forest governance; use of existing institutional spaces rather than creating new institutions; and convergence of Mission activities with other existing schemes, programmes and missions. The worrying observation mentioned in the audit is that not only were the institutions at the national level unable to provide overall guidance and monitor the convergence aspect, but the institutions at the state and the district level were also found unable to initiate measures that would have led to convergence and aid the bottom-up planning process. This calls for strengthening the planning process under the mission at all levels and ensuring their time-bound implementation. Fixing accountability is crucial to ensure that all implementing agencies at the national, state and district levels deliver their mandated responsibilities so that the Mission is not reduced to an ambitious piece of paperwork on climate change mitigation with no tangible outcomes. The audit revealed critical findings, including the absence of a state-specific plantation calendar and a cut-off date for submitting the Annual Plan or Operation (APO), which highlight a systematic planning failure in GIM implementation. The report highlights that the audit found no prescribed cut-off date in the mission documents or GIM implementation guidelines, even though fixing one is necessary for States’ APO submissions and to prepare a region-specific calendar for the entire country for activities like soil moisture conservation works, plant preparation, sowing of seeds/saplings, etc., before starting the plantation activity. Unless these deep structural and institutional deficiencies are fixed, GIM’s core objectives will remain a far-fetched dream.