Trees are one of the most iconic symbols of climate action. They pull carbon from the atmosphere, provide oxygen, restore biodiversity, and improve livelihoods. Afforestation (planting trees where none existed) and reforestation (restoring degraded forests) together are known as ARR projects.
Globally, ARR is one of the most widely adopted pathways in carbon markets. In India, with its vast degraded lands and dependence on agriculture and forests, ARR has immense potential.
But ARR also faces heavy scrutiny. Many projects promise more than they deliver: trees that never survive, monoculture plantations that harm biodiversity, or communities left out of benefits.
The 2025 Criteria for High-Quality CDR stress that ARR projects must be measured, durable, and just. That’s where Anaxee steps in—with last-mile reach, dMRV tools, and community-first models.
What Is ARR (Afforestation and Reforestation)?
ARR projects include:
-Afforestation: Establishing forests on land that has not been forested for decades.
-Reforestation: Restoring forests on degraded or recently deforested lands.
-Agroforestry & Bund Plantations: Integrating trees into farms, hedges, and bunds.
Done right, ARR not only removes carbon but delivers ecosystem resilience, biodiversity, and livelihoods.
Why ARR Matters for India
1. Huge Degraded Land Base
India has over 30 million hectares of degraded land—an untapped opportunity for carbon removal and ecosystem restoration.
2. Rural Livelihoods
Tree planting provides fuel, fodder, fruits, and timber—direct benefits for farmers and communities. With carbon finance, ARR becomes a long-term income stream.
3. Climate Targets
India’s NDCs under the Paris Agreement call for creating an additional 2.5–3 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent carbon sink by 2030 through forests and trees. ARR is central to this goal.
What Makes High-Quality ARR Projects?
The 2025 Criteria define key principles:
1. Social and Environmental Justice
-Avoid land grabs.
-Secure community consent and benefits.
-Respect Indigenous rights and cultural landscapes.
2. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Integrity
-No monoculture plantations in natural ecosystems.
-Native species, mixed forests, and landscape restoration.
3. Additionality and Baselines
-Projects must prove trees would not have grown without carbon finance.
-Conservative baselines for carbon stock.
4. MRV and Transparency
-Geotagged planting data.
-Satellite and ground verification.
-Independent third-party audits.
5. Durability
-Fire, drought, pests—ARR faces reversal risks. Projects must plan long-term maintenance and insurance buffers.
6. Leakage Control
-Ensure planting here doesn’t drive deforestation elsewhere.
The Challenges of ARR
-Low Survival Rates: Many plantation drives see <30% survival after a few years.
-Monocultures: Quick-growing species like eucalyptus harm ecosystems.
-Short-Termism: Projects collapse after initial funding.
-Community Exclusion: Farmers and locals often see no benefits.
This is why ARR projects face skepticism. To be credible, they must deliver quality, not just quantity.
Anaxee’s Approach to High-Quality ARR
Anaxee ensures ARR projects meet global standards while delivering local value.
1. Last-Mile Reach
-40,000+ Digital Runners mobilize communities across 26 states.
-Farmers are trained and incentivized for long-term tree care.
-Projects aligned with Verra (ARR methodologies), Gold Standard, and 2025 Criteria.
-Buyers receive auditable, traceable credits.
Case Example: Bund Plantations in Madhya Pradesh
Anaxee has pioneered bund plantations—trees planted along farm bunds:
-Carbon Removal: Sequesters carbon in biomass + soils.
-Farmer Benefits: Provides fodder, shade, and reduced erosion.
-Traceability: Each tree is geotagged and tracked in dMRV.
-Durability: Farmers protect trees because they share in revenue.
This model combines climate action, community income, and transparent reporting—a blueprint for scaling ARR in India.
India’s Global ARR Opportunity
Global buyers are looking for high-quality ARR credits:
-Microsoft, Shell, and major corporates invest in forest carbon.
-ARR credits trade actively in voluntary markets.
-Compliance markets (like India’s CCTS) may also integrate ARR soon.
If ARR in India meets quality benchmarks, it can:
-Unlock billions in carbon finance.
-Restore degraded landscapes.
-Create millions of rural jobs.
Scaling ARR: Quality over Hype
The world has seen too many “plant a billion trees” campaigns with little impact. The future is not about numbers—it’s about verified, durable, community-led ARR projects.
Scaling ARR requires:
-Quality-first design.
-Digital MRV for transparency.
-Farmer and community partnerships.
-Long-term management and durability planning.
Anaxee is building exactly this system in India.
Conclusion: Planting Trust Alongside Trees
ARR has the potential to be India’s most powerful carbon removal tool. But only if done right. The 2025 Criteria for High-Quality CDR provide the guardrails.
Anaxee ensures ARR projects are transparent, durable, and community-driven. By planting trust alongside trees, we create climate solutions that endure.
👉 Call to Action Partner with Anaxee to build high-quality afforestation and reforestation projects in India. Together, we can restore ecosystems, empower communities, and deliver credible carbon removals. Connect with us at sales@anaxee.com
Introduction: Why MRV Is the Backbone of Carbon Markets
Every carbon credit is supposed to represent one tonne of CO₂ removed or avoided. But how do we know that tonne is real? How do we ensure it isn’t double-counted, exaggerated, or reversed?
The answer is MRV—Measurement, Reporting, and Verification. Without MRV, carbon markets collapse into greenwashing and mistrust. With MRV, they become a credible climate solution.
The 2025 Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal makes MRV one of its central pillars. High-quality projects must measure transparently, report consistently, and verify independently.
In India, where projects span millions of smallholders and diverse landscapes, this is even more critical. Traditional MRV methods—paper-based surveys, occasional audits—are too slow and prone to error. What’s needed is digital MRV (dMRV): scalable, transparent, and cost-effective.
That’s where Anaxee comes in.
What Is MRV in Carbon Projects?
MRV stands for:
Measurement – collecting accurate data on carbon removal or emissions reduction.
Reporting – documenting and sharing the data in a standardized format.
Verification – independent auditing to ensure credibility.
For example:
-In a soil carbon project, measurement involves soil sampling and remote sensing.
-Reporting involves compiling data into methodologies like Verra’s VM0047.
-Verification means third-party auditors checking data integrity.
Without these steps, credits are just promises on paper.
Why MRV Is So Challenging in India
India’s carbon opportunity is massive—but so are the MRV challenges:
-Scale: Millions of farmers across thousands of villages.
-Diversity: Crops, soils, and practices vary by region.
-Data Gaps: Smallholders often lack records or connectivity.
-Cost: Traditional MRV can eat up 30–40% of project revenues.
-Timeliness: Manual audits take months or years, delaying credits.
These challenges risk excluding smallholders or creating low-quality credits.
Digital MRV (dMRV): The Next Generation
Digital MRV uses technology to make monitoring real-time, scalable, and verifiable. Tools include:
-Remote Sensing: Satellite and drone imagery for land-use tracking.
-IoT Sensors: Soil moisture, carbon flux, and weather data.
-Mobile Apps: Farmer surveys, geotagged photos, and activity logs.
-AI & Machine Learning: Pattern recognition for crop and forest growth.
-Blockchain: Immutable reporting and transparent registries.
Together, these make MRV faster, cheaper, and more credible.
Why MRV Is a Pillar of High-Quality Carbon Removal
The 2025 Criteria for High-Quality CDR stress MRV for three reasons:
Integrity – ensuring every claimed tonne is real.
Transparency – buyers, auditors, and communities see the same data.
Durability – tracking projects over decades to prevent reversals.
MRV isn’t just a technical box to tick—it’s what separates a market built on trust from one riddled with greenwashing.
Anaxee’s dMRV: Tech-Enabled Trust at Scale
Anaxee has built a digital MRV ecosystem designed for India’s unique challenges:
-Reversal blind spots: missing when carbon is re-released.
Weak MRV undermines market trust. Buyers walk away, farmers lose out, and the climate suffers.
India’s Opportunity: Becoming a Hub for Transparent Credits
If India can solve MRV at scale, it can become the world’s hub for credible NbS credits. Global buyers increasingly demand transparency: Microsoft, Stripe, and Frontier all require rigorous MRV.
With dMRV, India can:
-Unlock farmer participation.
-Build buyer confidence.
-Reduce project costs.
-Position itself as a global leader in carbon credit quality.
Case Example: Bund Plantations + dMRV
In Anaxee’s bund plantation projects in Madhya Pradesh:
-Digital Runners record tree planting with geotagged photos.
-Satellites confirm survival and growth.
-AI models estimate biomass accumulation.
-Dashboards show transparent progress to buyers.
The result: credits that are traceable, auditable, and trusted.
Future of MRV: Beyond Compliance
MRV will evolve from being a compliance burden to a value creator:
-Farmers can use data for better crop management.
-Corporates gain brand trust through transparent offsets.
-Communities build resilience through shared monitoring.
Anaxee’s Climate Command Centre is already pioneering this future—linking MRV with community development, financial flows, and SDG impacts.
Conclusion: MRV as the Engine of Trust
Carbon markets live or die by trust. MRV is the engine of that trust. Without it, credits are empty promises. With it, credits become real climate action.
The 2025 Criteria for High-Quality CDR made this clear. For India, the challenge is scale and credibility. Anaxee’s dMRV shows how to bridge that gap—combining last-mile reach, digital tools, and transparent systems.
The future of carbon removal will be digital, transparent, and community-driven. Anaxee is already building it.
Partner with Anaxee to deploy scalable, transparent dMRV solutions in India’s carbon projects. Let’s build trust, credibility, and impact together.
About Anaxee:
Anaxee drives/develops large-scale, country-wide Climate and Carbon Credit projects across India. We specialize in Nature-Based Solutions (NbS) and community-driven initiatives, providing the technology and on-ground network needed to execute, monitor, and ensure transparency in projects like agroforestry, regenerative agriculture, improved cookstoves, solar devices, water filters and more. Our systems are designed to maintain integrity and verifiable impact in carbon methodologies.
Beyond climate, Anaxee is India’s Reach Engine- building the nation’s largest last-mile outreach network of 100,000 Digital Runners (shared, tech-enabled field force). We help corporates, agri-focused companies, and social organizations scale to rural and semi-urban India by executing projects in 26 states, 540+ districts, and 11,000+ pin codes, ensuring both scale and 100% transparency in last-mile operations. Connect with Anaxee at sales@anaxee.com
Digital MRV (dMRV) is reshaping how carbon projects are measured and verified. India‑born Anaxee Digital Runners has built the country’s largest last‑mile data network, marrying human reach with satellite, sensor and AI workflows to cut verification costs by up to 70 % while speeding credit issuance by months. This in‑depth guide explores dMRV fundamentals, the global pivot to digitisation, India’s unique opportunity, and real‑world case studies of how Anaxee delivers trust and scale.
1. Introduction: The Race for Credible Carbon Data
The global carbon market crossed USD 1 trillion in traded value in 2024, yet more than one‑third of credits were flagged for quality concerns. Investors, corporates and regulators now demand evidence‑based impact before they will buy, retire or account for a tonne of CO₂e. Traditional monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) models – clipboards, paper forms, sporadic field visits – simply can’t keep up. Enter digital MRV (dMRV): a technology‑driven framework that streams geospatial, sensor and human‑validated data in near real‑time, automates analytics and slashes subjectivity.
If MRV was the carbon market’s “trust but verify” mantra, dMRV upgrades it to “trust because you can verify at any time.” For climate projects operating across thousands of villages and hectares, the difference is transformative: lower verification costs, faster credit issuance and, most importantly, heightened credibility in the eyes of buyers and auditors.
In this long‑form guide (≈4,000 words), we unpack what dMRV really means, why it is rapidly becoming the new norm, and how Anaxee Digital Runners – an Indore‑based deep‑tech company – has emerged as a trailblazer powering India’s most ambitious nature‑based and household‑level carbon projects.
2. MRV vs dMRV –
A Quick Primer Measurement, Reporting & Verification (MRV) dates back to the Kyoto Protocol. It prescribes that every carbon project must:
Measure baseline emissions and subsequent reductions or removals.
Report findings in an auditable format.
Verify data through a third‑party accredited body.
While robust in principle, legacy MRV workflows rely heavily on manual sampling and periodic site visits. A 2024 study by the LSE Grantham Institute estimated that up to 20 % of project costs can be swallowed by MRV overheads.
Enter dMRV
Digital MRV layers modern tech on top of the three pillars:
-Remote sensing & drones to capture canopy height, biomass and land‑use change.
-IoT sensors (soil probes, smart cook‑stove meters) for continuous data feeds.
-Machine learning to convert raw pixels and sensor noise into emissions factors.
-Blockchain or distributed ledgers for tamper‑proof records and transparent audit trails.
Key stat: A Gold Standard working group found that dMRV can cut verification costs by 40–70 % and compress credit issuance cycles by up to 12 months.
With market mechanisms like Article 6 of the Paris Agreement demanding ever faster, globally comparable data, dMRV is gaining near‑mandatory status.
3. Why dMRV Matters to the Voluntary & Compliance Carbon Markets
3.1 Speed
Faster verification means carbon revenues hit project developers’ accounts sooner, improving cash flow and enabling reinvestment in community benefits.
3.2 Accuracy & Integrity
Continuous monitoring reduces the risk of over‑ or under‑crediting. Transparent, tamper‑proof data logs improve buyer confidence and comply with stringent registries.
3.3 Scale
With automated analytics, a single verifier can oversee dozens of projects simultaneously, unlocking economies of scale previously impossible.
3.4 Equity
Lower transaction costs open the door for smallholder farmers, village bodies and micro‑entrepreneurs to participate in carbon markets – a game‑changer for rural economies.
4. The Global dMRV Landscape in 2025 From Silicon Valley start‑ups to UN‑backed think tanks, the race to build ‘infrastructure for trust’ is heating up.
Region
Notable Players
Signature Tech
Focus Sector
North America
Pachama, Regrow Ag
LiDAR + AI Forest Models
Forestry & Agriculture
Europe
Sylvera, Climate Trace
Satellites + ML
Global MRV Scoring
Africa
BURN Manufacturing
Smart‑metered cook‑stoves
Household Energy
Asia
Green Carbon, Netra Tech
Methane Sensors + Blockchain
Rice & Blue Carbon
India is fast emerging as the largest testbed for scalable dMRV, thanks to its vast rural landscapes, smartphone penetration and proactive policy support.
5. India’s Moment: Policy, Demand & Innovation
National Green Credit Programme (2023) – incentivises biodiversity, water conservation and carbon sequestration projects, all requiring stringent MRV.
Startup India & Digital Public Goods – zero‑rating of GST on carbon credits and sandboxes for climate‑tech pilots.
Corporate Net‑Zero Rush – Over 160 Indian companies have SBTi‑approved targets, driving demand for high‑quality local credits.
Combined, these forces make India ground zero for dMRV experimentation – and Anaxee sits squarely at the intersection of tech capability and last‑mile reach.
6. Meet Anaxee:
India’s Largest Last‑Mile Climate Data Infrastructure Founded in 2016, Anaxee Digital Runners began as a distributed field‑data platform for banks and FMCG giants. Today, its 40,000‑strong ‘Digital Runners’ network covers 26 states, 7,000+ pin codes and 120,000 villages, making it India’s deepest boots‑on‑the‑ground data operation.
6.1 Core Strengths
-Human + Digital Hybrid: Runners validate satellite insights with geo‑tagged photos, ensuring on‑ground reality matches remote sensing output.
-Real‑Time Data Pipelines: A cloud dashboard visualises every tree, stove or sensor in near real‑time for project owners and auditors.
-Local Empowerment: Village‑level micro‑entrepreneurs earn revenue for each data task, injecting income into rural economies.
Transparency for corporates, registries, communities
Strategic tie‑ups with ISRO’s Bhuvan Portal and Azure FarmBeats provide high‑resolution imagery and agronomic models, while an MoU with IIT Kharagpur advances AI species‑classification.
-Area: 12,000 ha across 45 villages in Maharashtra.
-Data Points: 2.8 million trees monitored via UAV + mobile app surveys.
-Outcome: Verification cost ₹52/ha/year vs ₹380 in manual MRV; first 50,000 credits issued in 11 months (70 % faster).
8.2 Clean Cooking for Tribal Households
-Scale: 60,000 smart‑metered LPG connections in Madhya Pradesh.
-dMRV Edge: Burner‑level sensors push usage data every 30 minutes, validated by monthly Runner visits.
-Impact: Average 1.6 tCO₂e avoided per household per year; credit payments disbursed via UPI.
8.3 Mangrove Restoration, Sundarbans Delta
-Area: 3,500 ha degraded coastline.
-Tech: Sentinel‑2 NDVI change detection + community photo transects.
-Projected Benefit: 1.2 million tonnes CO₂e removed over 30 years; blue‑carbon warrant enables upfront financing.
9. Overcoming dMRV Challenges – Data Quality, Leakage & Permanence
-Sensor Drift & Calibration – Anaxee installs dual sensors per site and cross‑checks against Runner‑captured readings.
-Leakage Detection – Geofenced alerts flag land‑use change in buffer zones within 72 hours for corrective action.
-Permanence Risk – Parametric insurance via blockchain smart contracts auto‑pays for replanting if cyclones or fires are detected.
-Data Privacy – Differential‑privacy algorithms anonymise household‑level data while preserving aggregate accuracy.
10. Future Outlook: Article 6, Tokenisation & AI Automation
-Article 6 Trust Layer: With UN supervisory bodies signalling digital reporting templates, Anaxee’s modular APIs are Article 6‑ready.
-Instant Settlement: Tokenised credits on public‑permitted chains enable near‑instant payouts to smallholders.
-AI‑First MRV: Multispectral AI models will auto‑identify species and growth anomalies, enabling predictive maintenance of carbon assets.
-Global Expansion: Pilot projects in Kenya and Brazil leverage partner Runner networks under a franchise model.
11. Conclusion & Call to Action:
The carbon market is no longer just about planting trees or switching fuels; it’s about proving, continuously and transparently, that those interventions work. Digital MRV is the engine of that proof, and Anaxee has built a uniquely Indian – and globally relevant – engine room.
Whether you are a corporate chasing net‑zero, a project developer seeking scale, or an investor hungry for verifiable impact, Anaxee Digital Runners offers the people, platform and proof to deliver high‑integrity credits at speed.
Anaxee is India’s Reach Engine! we are building India’s largest last-mile outreach network of 100,000 Digital Runners (shared feet-on-street, tech-enabled) to help Businesses and Social Organizations scale to rural and semi-urban India, We operate in 26 states, 540+ districts, and 11,000+ pin codes in India. We Help in last-mile execution of projects for (1) Corporates, (2) Agri-focused companies, (3) Climate, and (4) Social organizations. Using technology and people on-the-ground (our Digital Runners), we help in scale and execute projects across 100s of cities and bring 100% transparency in groundwork. We also work in the Tech for Climate domain, providing technology for the execution and monitoring of Nature-Based (NbS) and Community projects. Our technology & processes bring transparency and integrity into carbon projects across various methodologies (Agroforestry, Regen Agriculture, Solar devices, Improved Cookstoves, Water filters, LED lamps, etc.) worldwide.
Anaxee Digital Runners Private Limited 303, Right-wing, (use Lift#1) New IT Park Building 3rd floor, Pardesi Pura Main Rd, Electronic Complex, Sukhlia, Indore,
Madhya Pradesh 452003
